Landmarks of scientific socialism : "anti-Duehring"

Landmarks ^f .^
Scientific Soclafem"
(Anti-Duelirlnff)

BY "

FREDERICK ENGELS

^m

H Y.

5,76

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

From the Library of

V. F. CALVERTON

DATE DUE

iv-

-•gS^-

M ^UJ4»AJ^

-Attfi=£

^BT&g^

a^B^

MAYl2*J7MY <f

iii|^^^ii»:rffj

^S^ii

&-, ,f-M'"V'Ai'^-

■iNTED IN L

■^»^;^A lAt

Cornell University Library
HX276 .E57 1907

Landmarks of scientific socialism :

olin

3 1924 030 355 956

The original of tliis book is in
tine Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.

http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030355956

LANDMARKS OF
SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

"ANTI-DUEHRING"

BY

FREDERICK ENGELS

TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY AUSTIN LEWIS

CHICAGO

CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY

CO-OPERATIVE

Copyright, 1907
By Charles H. Kerr & Company

80

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter I

PAGE

Translator's Introduction 9

Chapter II

Prefaces 23

Part 1 23

Part II 27

Part III.- 35

Chapter III

Introduction 36

I. In General 36

II. What Herr Duehring Has to Say 50

PART I
Chapter IV

Apriorism 54

The Scheme of the Universe 63

Chapter V

Natural Philosophy 70

Time and Space 70

Cosmogony, Physics, and Chemistry 82

The Organic World 94

The Organic World (conclusion) 107

Chapter VI

Moral and Law 116

Eternal Truths 116

Equality. . 130

Freedom and Necessity 146

" TABLE X)F CONTENTS

Chapter VII

PAGE

The Dialectic 150

Quantity 150

Negation of the Negation 159

Conclusion 175

PART II

Chapter VIII

Political Economy 176

I. Objects and Methods 176

II. The Force Theory 184

III. Force Theory (continued) 193

IV. Force Theory (conclusion) 20J

V. Theory of Value 214

VI. Simple and Compound Labor 219

VII. Capital and Surplus Value 223

VIII. Capital and Surplus Value (conclusion) . . 227

IX. Natural Economic Laws — Ground Rent . . 232

X. With Respect to the "Critical History" . . 235

PART III

Chapter IX

Socialism 236

Production 236

Distribution 245

The State, The Family, and Education .... 256

Appendix 261

LANDMARKS OF
SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

CHAPTER I
translator's introduction

When Dr. Eugene Duehring, privat decent at Ber-
lin University, in 1875, proclaimed the fact that he had
become converted to Socialism, he was not content to
take the socialist movement as he found it, but set out
forthwith to promulgate a theory of his own. His was
a most elaborate and self-conscious mission. He stood
forth as the propagandist not only of certain specific and
peculiar views of socialism but as the originator of a new
philosophy, and the propounder of strange and wonder-
ful theories with regard to the universe in general. The
taunt as to his all-comprehensiveness of intellect, with
which Engels pursues him somewhat too closely and
much too bitterly, could not have affected Herr Duehring
very greatly. He had his own convictions with respect
to that comprehensive intellect of his and few will be
found to deny that he had the courage of his convic-
tions.

Thirty years have gone since Duehring published the
fact of his conversion to socialism. The word " con-
version" contains in itself the distinction between the
socialism of thirty years ago and that of to-day. What
was then a peculiar creed has now become a very wide-
spread notion. Men are not now individually converted

7

8 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

to socialism but whole groups and classes are driven into
the socialist ranks by the pressure of circumstances.
The movement springs up continually in new and unex-
pected places. Here it may languish apparently, there
it gives every indication of strong, new and vigorous
life.

The proletariat of the various countries race as it were
towards the socialist goal and, as they change in their
respective positions, the economic and political fields on
which they operate furnish all the surprises and fasci-
nations of a race course. In 1892 Engels wrote that the
German Empire would in all probability be the scene of
the first great victory of the European proletariat. But
thirteen years have sufficed to bog the German movement
in the swamps of Parliamentarianism. Great Britain,
whose Chartist movement was expected to provide the
British proletariat with a tradition, has furnished few ex-
amples of skill in the management of proletarian poli-
tics, but existing society in Great Britain has none the
less been thoroughly undermined. The year before that
in which Herr Duehring made his statement of con-
version, the British Liberals had suffered a defeat which,
in spite of an apparent recuperation in 1880, proved the
downfall of modern Liberalism in Great Britain, and
showed that the Liberal Party could no longer claim to
be the party of the working class. Not only that, but
the British philosophic outlook has become completely
changed. The nonconformist conscience grows less and
less the final court , of appeal in matters political. A
temporary but fierce attack of militant imperialism coupled
with the very general acceptance of an empiric collectiv-
ism has sufficed to destroy old ideas and to make the
road to victory easier for a determined and relentless
working class movement.

translator's introduction 9

But if thirty j'ears iiave worked wonders in Europe,
and disintegration Can be plainly detected in the social
fabric, the course of social and political development in
the United States has been still more remarkable. In
1875 the country was still a farming community living on
the edge of a vast wilderness through which the rail-
road was just beginning to open a path. Thirty years
have been sufficient to convert it into the greatest of
manufacturing and commercial states. The occupation
t)f the public- lands, the establishment of industry on an
hitherto undreamed of scale, the marvellous, almost
overnight creation of enormous cities, all these have re-
sulted in the production of a proletariat, cosmopolitan in
its character, and with no traditions of other than cash
relations with the class which employs it. The purity
of the economic fact i; unobscured. Hence a socialistic
agitation has arisen in the United States, the enthusiasm
of which vies with that in any of the European countries
and the practical results of which bid fair to be even
more striking. This movement has arisen almost spon-
taneously as the result of economic conditions. It is a
natural growth not t"ie result of the preaching of ab-
stract doctrines or the picturing of an ideal state. The
modern American proletariat is, as a matter of fact, given
neither to philosophic speculation nor to the imagination
which is necessary to idealism. Such socialism as it
has adopted it has taken up because it has felt impelled
thereto by economic pressure.

Hence, apart from all socialistic propaganda, a dis-
tinct disintegration-process has been proceeding in mod-
ern society. Each epoch carries withia itself the seeds
pf_,its „own dissolution. Things have just this much
value, they are transitory, says Engels in his paraphrase

lO LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

of Hegel, and this is in fact the central idea of his
dialectic philosophy.

He criticises the work of Duehring from this stand-
point. He labors not so much to show that Duehring.
is mistaken in certain conclusions as to prove that the
whole method of his argument is wrong. His diatribes,
though the subject matter of his argument requires him
to attack the Berlin tutor, are directed chiefly against all
absolute theories. " Eternal truth," in the realm of
science, equally with that of philosophy, he scouts as
absurd. To interpret the history of the time in terms
of the spirit of the time, to discover the actual beneath
the crust of the conventional, to analyse the content of
the formulae which the majority are always ready to
take on trust, and to face the fact with a mind clear of
preconceived notions is what Engels set out to do. It
cannot be said that he altogether succeeded. No man
can succeed in such a task. The prejudices and ani-
mosities created by incessant controversy warped his
judgment in some respects, and tended on more than
one occasion to destroy his love of fair play. The spirit
which is occasionally shown in his controversial writing
is to be deplored but it may be said in extenuation that
all controversies of that time were disfigured in the same
way. He pays the penalty for the fault.

Much of the work is valueless to-day because of Eng-
els' eagerness to score a point off his adversary rather
than to state his own case. But where the philosopher
lays the controversialist on one side for a brief period,
and takes the trouble to elucidate his own ideas we dis-
cover what has been lost by these defects of tempera-
ment. He possesses in a marked degree the gift of
clear analysis and of keen and subtle statement.

The socialist movement everywhere arrives some time

TRANSLATORS INTRODUCTION II

or Other at what may be called the Duehring stage of
controversy. There are two very distinct impulses to-
wards socialism. The individuals who are influenced
by these impulses must sooner or later come into col-
lision, and as a result of the impact the movement is for
a time divided into hostile parties and a war of pam-
phleteering and oratory supervenes. This period has just
ended in France. For the last few years the French
movement has been divided upon the question of the
philosophical foundation of the movement, and the par-
ties to the controversy may be divided into those who
sought to justify the movement upon ethical grounds
and those who have regarded it as a modern political
phenomenon dependent alone upon economic conditions.
The former of these parties based its claims to the suf-
frages of the French people upon the justice of the so-
cialistic demands. It proclaimed socialism to be the
logical result of the Revolution, the necessary conclusion
from the teachings of the revolutionary philosophers.
Justice was the word in Which they summed up the claims
of socialism, that and Equality, for ^ich latter term
as Engels points out in the present work, the French
have a fondness which amounts almost to a mania.
Hence one party of the French socialist movement chose
as a platform those very " eternal truths " which Engels
ridicules and which it is the sole purpose of the present
work to attack.

To kill " eternal truths " is however by no means an
easy matter. Years of habit have made them part of the
mental structure of the citizens of the modern dem-
ocratic or semi-democratic states. Not only in France
but to an even greater degree in the English speaking
countries these " eternal truths " persist, they form the
stock in trade of the clergyman and the ordinary poli-

12 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

tician. Bernard Shaw directs the shafts of his ridicule
against these " eternal truths" and smites with a sarcasm
which is more fatal than all the solemn German philos-
ophy which lEngels has at his command. But Shaw
is not appreciated by the British' socialist. The latter
cannot imagine that the writer is really poking fun at
things so exceedingly serious and so essential to any well
constituted man, to a well-constituted Briton in par-
ticular. The British socialist is as much in love with
" eternal truths " as is the stiffest and most unregenerate
of his bourgeois opponents. He therefore toploftily de-
clares that Mr. Shaw is an unbalanced person, a licensed
jester. Precisely the same results would attend the
efforts of an American iconoclast who would venture to
ridicule the " eternal truths which have been handed down
to us in documents of unimpeachable respectability, like
the Declaration of Independence, and by Fourth of July
orators, portly of person and of phrase.

The " eternal truth " phase of socialist controversy
seems to be as eternal as the truth, and must necessarily
be so as long as the movement is recruited by men who
bring into it the ideas which they have derived from the
ordinary training of the American citizen.

The other side of the controversy to which reference
has been made derived its philosophy from the experience
of the proletariat. This modern proletariat, trained to
the machine, is a distinct product of the occupation by
which it lives. The organisation of industry in the
grasp of which the workman is held during all his work-
ing hours and manufacture by the machine-process, the
motions of which he is compelled to follow have pro-
duced in him a mental condition which does not readily
respond to any sentimental stimulus. The incessant pro-
cess from cause to effect endows hjm with a sort of

tka'/slator's iniroduction 13

logical sense in r.<.*cordance with which he works out the
problems of life independent of the preconceptions and
prejudices wh*:h have so great a hold upon the reason
of his fellow citizens who are not of the industrial
proletariat. Without knowing why he arrives by dint
of the experience of his daily toil at the same conclusions
as Engels attained as the result of philosophic training
and much erudition. The Church is well aware of this
fact to her sorrow for the industrial proletarian seldom
darkens her portals. He has no hatred of religion, as
the atheistic radical bourgeois had, but with a good-
natured " non possumus" says by his actions what Engels
says by his philosophy.

Revolution is an every day occurrence with the in-
dustrial proletarian. He sees processes transformed in
the twinkling of an eye. He wakes up one morning to
find that +he trade which he has learned laboriously has
overnight become a drug on the market. He is used
to seeing the machine whose energy has enchained him
flung on the scrap heap and contemptuously disowned,
in favor of a more competent successor whose motions
he must learn to follow or be himself flung on the scrap
heap also. This constant revolution in the industrial
process enters into his blood. He becomes a revolution-
ist by force of habit. There is no need to preach the
dialectic to him. It is continually preached. The tran-
sitoriness of phenomena is impressed upon him by the
changes in industrial combinations, by the constant sub-
stitution of new modes of production for those to which
he has been accustomed, substitutions which may make
" an aristocrat of labor " of him to-day, and send him
tramping to-morrow.

The industrial proletarian therefore knows practically
what Engels has taught philosophically. So that when

14 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

in the course of his poHtical peregrinations he strays
into the socialist movement and there finds those who
profess a socialism based upon abstract conceptions and
" eternal truths " his contempt is as outspoken as that
of a Friedrich Engels who chances upon a certain Eugen
Duehring spouting paraphrases of Rousseau by the so-
cialistic wayside. Engels simply anticipated by the way
of books the point of view reached by the industrial pro-
letarian of to-day by the way of experience, and by the
American machine-made proletarian in particular. This
is a matter of no mean importance. In the following
pages we can detect if we can look beyond and beneath
the mere criticism of Duehring, an attitude of mind, not
of one controversialist to another merely but of an en-
tire class, the class upon which modern society is driven
more and more to rely, to the class which relies upon it.
For their popular support classes and governments
rely upon formulae. When the cry of " Down with the
Tsar " takes- the place of the humbly spoken " Little
Father " what becomes of the Tsardom ? When the
terms " Liberty " and " Equality " become the jest of
the workshop, upon what basis can a modern democratic
state depend? This criticism of "eternal truths" is
destructive criticism, and destructive of much more than
the " truths." It is more destructive than sedition it-
self. Sedition may be suppressed cheaply in these days
of quick-firing guns and open streetsr But society
crumbles away almost insensibly beneath the mordant
acid of contemptuous analysis. So to-day goaded on
the one side by the gibes of the machine-made proletariat,
and on the other, by the raillery of the philosophic
jester, society staggers along like a wounded giant and
is only too glad to creep into its cave and to forget its
sorrows in drink.

translator's introduction 15

As for 1875, " Many things have happened since then "
as Beaconsfield used to say, but of all that has happened
nothing could have given more cynical pleasure to the
" Old Jew " than the lack of faith in its own shibboleths
which has seized the cocksure pompous society in which
he disported himself. The rhetoric of a Gladstone based
upon the " eternal truths " which constituted always the
foundations of his political appeals would fail to affect
the masses to-day with any other feeling than that of
ridicule. We have already arrived at the " Twilight of
the Idols " at least so far as " eternal truths " are con-
cerned. They still, find however an insecure roosting
place in the pulpits of the protestant sects.

If blows have been showered upon the political
" eternal truths " in the name of which the present epoch
came into existence social and ethical ideals have by no
means escaped attack. Revolt has been the watchword
of artist and theologian alike. The pre-Rafaelite
school, a not altogether unworthy child of the Chartist
movement, raised the cry of artistic revolt against ab-
solutism and the revolt spread in ever widening circles
until it has exhausted itself in the sickly egotism of the
" art nouveau." Even Engels, with all his independence
and glorification of change as a philosophy, can find an
opportunity to fling a sneer at Wagner and the " music
of the future." The remnants of early Victorianism
cling persistently to Engels. He cannot release him-
self altogether from the bonds of the bourgeois doctrine
which he is so anxious to despise. He is in many re-
spects the revolutionist of '48, a bourgeois politician
possessed at intervals by a proletarian ghost, such as he
says himself ever haunts the bourgeois. The younger
generation without any claims to revolutionism has gone
further than he in the denunciation of authority and with-

l6 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

out the same self consciousness, "ihe scorn of Bernard
Shaw for the moguls of the academies and for social
ideals is greater than the scorn of Engels for " eternal
truths." Says Mr. Shaw, " The great musician accepted
by his unskilled listener is vilified by his fellow musician.
It was the musical culture of Europe that pronounced
Wagner the inferior of Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer.
The great artist finds his foes among the painters and
not among the men in the street. It is the Royal
Academy that places Mr. Marcus Stone above Mr. Burne
Jones. It is not rational that it should be so but it is
so for all that. The realist at last loses patience with
ideals altogether and finds in them only something to
blind us, something to numb us, something to murder
self in us. Something whereby instead of resisting death
we disarm it by committing suicide." Here is a note of
modernity which Engels was hardly modern enough to
appreciate and yet it was written before he died.

Nietzsche, Tolstoy and a host of minor writers have
all had their fling at " eternal truths " and modern ideals.
The battle has long since rolled away from the ground
on which Engels fought. His arguments on the dia-
lectic are commonplaces to-day which it would be a work
of supererogation to explain to anyone except the per-
sistent victim of Little Bethel. The world has come to
accept them with the equanimity with which it always
accepts long disputed truths.

The sacred right of nationality for which men con-
tended in Engels' youth, as a direct consequence of po-
litical " eternal truths " has been ruthlessly brushed aside.
The philosopher talks of the shameful spoliation of the
smaller by the larger nations, a moral view of commercial
progress, which an age, grown more impatient of
" eternal truths " than EngeJs himself simply ignores.

TRANSLATOR S INTRODUCTION XJ

and moves on without a qualm to the destruction of free
governments in South Africa. Backward and unpro-
gressive peoples jeer, it is true, and thereby show their
political ineptitude, for even the American Republic, hav-
ing freed the negro under the banner of " eternal truth "
annexes the Philippines and raids Panama in defian9e
of it.

And so since the days of 1875 the world has come to
accept the general correctness of Engels' point of view.

The enemy which Engels was most anxious to dis-
lodge was " mechanical socialism," a naive invention of
a perfect system capable of withstanding the ravages of
time, because founded upon eternal principles of truth
and justice. That enemy has now obeyed the law of the
dialectic and passed away. Nobody builds such systems,
nowadays. They have ceased their building however not
in obedience to the commands of Friedrich Engels but
because the lapse of time and the change in conditions
have proved the dialectic to the revolutionist. With the
annihilation of " eternal truths," system building ceased
to be even an amusing pastime. The revolutionist has
been revolutionized. He no longer fancies that he can
make revolutions. He knows better. He is content to
see that the road is kept clear so that revolutions may de-
velop themselves. Your real revolutionist, for example,
puts no obstacle in the path of the Trust, he is much too
wise. He leaves that to the corrosion of time and the
development of his pet dialectic. He sees the contradic-
tion concealed in the system which apparently triumphs,
and in the triumph of the system he sees also the triumph
of the contradiction. He waits until that shadowy pro-
letariat which haunts the system takes on itself flesh and
blood and shakes the system with which it has grown
up. But this waiting for the development of the in-

l8 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

evitable is weary work to those who want to realise
forthwith, so they, unable to confound the logic of Eng-
els, attack the " abstractions " on which his theory is
founded. They still oppose their " eternal truths " to
the dialectic.

Thus in England, where the strife between the two
parties in the socialist movement has lately been waged
with a somewhat amusing ferocity, Engels is charged
with a wholesale borrowing from Hegel. In any other
country than England this would not be laid up against
a writer, but the Englishman is so averse to philosophy
that the association of one's name with that of a phil-
osopher, and a German philosopher in particular, is tanta-
mount to an accusation of keeping bad company. But
a glance at the following pages should tend to dispose
of so romantic a statement which could, in fact, only
have been made by those who know neither Hegel nor
Engels.

That Hegel furnished the original philosophic impetus
to both Marx and Engels is true beyond question, but
the impetus once given, the course of the founders of
modern socialism tended ever further from the opin-
ions of the idealistic philosopher. In fact Engels says
somewhat self consciously, not to say boasts, that he and
his followers were pioneers in applying the dialectic to
materialism. Whatever accusation may be made against
Engels, this much is certain that he was no Hegelian.
In fact both in the present work and in " Feuerbach "
he is at great pains to show the relation of the socialist
philosophy as conceived by himself and Marx to that of
the great man for whom he always kept a somewhat
exaggerated respect, but from whom he differed funda-
mentally. Engels' attack upon the philosophy of Dueh-
ring is based upon dislike of its idealism, the funda-

translator's introduction 19

mental thesis upon which the work depends being entirely
speculative. Duehring insisted that his philosophy was
a realist philosophy and Engels' serious arguments, apart
from the elaborate ridicule with which he covers his op-
ponent and which is by no means a recommendation to
the book, is directed to show that it is not realist, that it
depends upon certain preconceived notions. Of these
notions, some are axiomatic, as Duehring claims, that is
they are propositions which are self evident to Herr
Duehring but which will not stand investigation. Others
again are untrue and are preconceptions so far as they
are out of harmony with established facts.

Much of Engels' work is out of date judged by recent
biological and other discoveries, but the essential arigu-
ment respecting the interdependence of all departments
of knowledge, and the impossibility of making rigid
classifications holds good to-day in a wider sense than
when Engels wrote. Scientific truths which have been
considered absolute, theories which have produced ap-
proximately correct results, have all been discredited.
The dogmas of science against which the dogmatic ec-
clesiastics have directed their scornful contempt have
shared the same fate as the ecclesiastical dogmas. Noth-
ing remains certain save the certainty of change. There
are no ultimates. Even the atom is suspect and the
claims of the elements to be elementary are rejected
wholesale with something as closely resembling scorn
as the scientist is ever able to attain. A scientific writer
has recently said "What is undeniable is that the Dal-
tonian atom has within a century of its acceptance as a
fundamental reality suffered disruption. Its proper
place in nature is not that formerly assigned to it. No
longer ' in seipso totus, teres, atque rotundus ' its repu-
tation for inviolability and indestructibility is gone for

20 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC /SOCIALISM

ever. Each of these supposed ' ultimates ' is now known
to be the scene of indescribable activities, a complex piece
of mechanism composed of thousands" of parts, a star-
cluster in miniature, subject to all kinds of dynamical
vicissitudes, to perturbations, accelerations, internal fric-
tion, total or partial disruption. And to each is ap-
pointed a fixed term of existence. Sooner or later the
balance of equilibrium is tilted, disturbance eventuates in
overthrow; the tiny exquisite system finally breaks up.
Of atoms, as of men, it may be said with truth ' Quisque
suos patitur manes."

The discovery of radium was in itself sufficient to
revolutionise the heretofore existing scientific theories
and the revolution thereby effected has been enough to
cause Sir William Crookes to say, " There has been a
vivid new start, our physicists have remodelled their
views as to the constitution of matter." In his address
to the physicists at Berlin the same scientist said, "This
fatal quality of atomic dissociation appears to be uni-
versal, and operates whenever we brush a piece of glass
with silk ; it works in the sunshine and raindrops in
lightnings and flame ; it prevails in the waterfall and the
stormy, sea " and a writer in the Edinburgh Review (De-
cember, 1903) remarks in this connection " Matter he
(Sir William Crookes) consequently regards as doomed
to destruction. Sooner or later it will have dissolved
into the ' formless mist ' of protyle and ' the hour hand
of eternity will have completed one revolution.' The
' dissipation of energy ' has then found its correlative in
the ' dissolution of Matter.' "

The scope of this revolution may only be gauged by
the fact that one writer (" The Alchemy of the Sea,"
London " Outlook," Feb. ir, 1905^ has ventured to say,
and this is but one voice in a general chorus : " To-day

TRANSLATOR S INTRODUCTION 21

no one believes in the existence of elements; no one
questions the possibility of a new alchemy ; and the actual
evolution* of one element from another has been ob-
served in the laboratory — observed by Sir WiUiam
Ramsey in London, and confirmed by a chemist in St.
Petersburg." Helium being an evolution of radium and
it is expected furthermore that -radium will prove to be
an evolution of uranium and so there is a constant pro-
cess as the writer points out of what was formerly called
alchemy the transmutation of one metal into another.

It is clear that in face of these facts the arguments
of Engels possess even greater forc;e at the present day
than when they were enunciated and that the old hard
and fast method of arguing from absolute truths is dead
and done for.

Only statesmen see fit to still harp on the same phrases
which have become as it were a part of the popular
mental structure and by constant appeals to the old
watchwords to obscure the fact of change. Were one
not acquainted with the essential stupidity of the po-
litical mind and the lapk of grasp which is the character-
istic of statesmen, it might be imagined that all this was
done with malice aforethought and that there was a
sort of tacit conspiracy on the part of the politicians to
delude the people. But experience of the inexcusable
blunders and the inexplicable errors into which states-
men are continually driven forces the conclusion that
they are in reality no whit in advance of the electorate
and that only now and then a Beaconsfield appears who
can understand the drift of events. Such a man is the
" revolutionist " which Beaconsfield claimed himself to
be. But what shall we say of the President of the
country that has attained the highest place in industrial
progress among the nations, whose whole history is a

22 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

verification of the truth of the dialectic and who can still
appeal to " individualism " as i guiding principle of
political action? It is a wanton flying in the face of the'
experience of the last quarter of a century and such rash-
ness will require its penalty. " Back to Kant " appears
to be the hope of reactionary politicians as well as of re-
actionary philosophers.

CHAPTER II
I

PREFACES

\

The following work is by no means the fruit of some
" inward compulsion," quite the contrary.

When three years ago, Herr Duehring suddenly chal-
lenged the world, as a scholar and reformer of socialism,
friends in Germany frequently expressed the wish that I
should throw a critical light upon these new socialist
doctrines, in the central organ of the Social Democratic
Party, at that time the "Volkstaat." They held it as
very necessary that new opportunity for division and
confusion should not be afforded in a party s6 young
and so recently definitely united. They were in a better
condition than myself to comprehend the condition of
affairs in Germany, so that I was compelled to trust to
their judgment. It appeared furthermore that the prose-
lyte was welcomed by a certain portion of the socialist
press, with a warmth, which meant nothing more than
kindliness to Herr Duehring, but it was seen by a por-
tion of the party press that a result of this kindly feeling
towards Herr Duehring was the introduction unper-
ceived of the Duehring doctrine. People were found
who were soon ready to spread his doctrine in a popular
form among the workingmen, and finally Herr Duehring
and his little sect employed all the arts of advertisement
and intrigue to compel the " Volksblatt " to change its
attitude respecting the new teachings which put forth
such tremendous claims.

23

24 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

However, a year elapsed before I could make up my
mind to engage in so disagreeable a business to the
neglect of my other labors. It was the sort of thing
one had to get through as quickly as possible, once it
was begun. And it was not only unpleasant but quite a
task. The new socialist theory appeared as the last
practical result of a new philosophic system. It there-
fore involved an investigation of it in connection with
this system and therefore of the system itself. It was
necessary to follow Herr Duehring over a wide expanse
of country where he had dealt with everything under
the sun, yea, and more also. So there came into ex-
istence a series of articles which appeared from the be-
ginning of 1877 in the successor of the " Volkstaat," the
" Vorwaerts " of Leipsic, and are collected here.

It was my object which extended the criticism to a
length out of all proportion to the scientific value of the
matter and, therefore, of Herr Duehring's writings.
There are two further reasons in extenuation of this
lengthiness. In the first place it gave me an opportunity
of developing my views, in a positive fashion, with re-
spect to matters which are connected with this, though
very different, and which are of more general scientific
and practical interest to-day. I have taken the oppor-
tunity to do so in every chapter, and, as this book cannot
undertake to set up a system in opposition to that of Herr
Duehring, it is to be hoped that the reader will not over-
look the real significance of the views which I have set
forth. I have already had sufficient proof that my la-
bors have not been altogether in vain in this regard.

On the other hand the " system-shaping " Herr Dueh-
ring is by no means an exceptional phenomenon in Ger-
many these days. Nowadays in Germany systems
of cosmogony, of natural philosophy in particular, of

PREFACES 25

politics, of economics, etc., are in the habit of shooting
up over night like mushrooms. The most insignificant
Doctor of Philosophy, nay, even the student, has no
further use for a complete " system." In the modern
state, it is predicated that every citizen is able to pass
judgment on all the questions upon which he is called
upon to vote; in political economy it is assumed that
every consumer is thoroughly acquainted with all com-
modities, which he has occasion to buy to maintain him-
self withal, and the same idea is also held as regards
knowledge. Freedom of knowledge demands that a per-
son write of that which he has not learned and pro-
claim this as the only sound scientific method. But Herr
Duehring is one of the most conspicuous types of those
absurd pseudo-scientists, who to-day occupy so conspicu-
ous a place in Germany and drown everything with their
noisy nonsense. Noisy nonsense in poetry, in philosophy,
in political economy, in writing history: noisy non-
sense in the professor's chair and tribune; noisy non-
sense too in the claims to superiority and intellectuality
above the vulgar noisy nonsense of other nations, noisy
nonsense the most characteristic and mightiest product
of German intellectual activity, cheap and bad, like other
German products, along with which, Iregret to say, they
were not exhibited at Philadelphia.

So, German socialism, particularly since Herr Dueh-
ring set the example, beats the drum, and produces here
and there one who prides himself upon a " science " of
which he knows nothing. It is this, a sort of child's
disease which marks the first conversion of the German
university man to social democracy and is inseparable
from him, but it will soon be thrust aside by the re-
markable sound sense of our working class.

It is not my fault that I am obliged to follow Herr

26 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

Duehring into a realm in which I can at the very most
only claim to be a dilettante. On such occasions I have
for the most part limited myself to placing the plain
incontrovertible facts in contrast with the false or
crooked assertions of my opponent, as in relation to
jurisprudence and many instances with regard to natural
science. In other places he indulges in universal views
on the subject of natural science theories and therefore
on a field where the professional naturalist must range
out of his own particular specialty to neighboring re-
gions. Where he, according to Herr Virchow's confessions
is just as good a " half-knower " as the rest of us. For
slight deficiencies and unavoidable errors in the publi-
cation I hope that the same indulgence will be extended
to me as "has been shown the other side of 'the contro-
vcrsy.

Just as I was completing this preface I received the
publishers' notice of a new important book by Herr
Duehring. " New Foundations for rational Physics and
Chemistry." Although I am very well aware of my de-
ficiencies in physics and chemistry I still believe that I
know my Duehring well enough, without having read
the book, to venture to say that the laws ot physics and
chemistry there set forth are worthy of being placed
alongside of Herr Duehring's former discoveries and
the laws of economics, scheme of the universe, etc., ex-
amined in my writings and proved to be misunderstood
of commonplace, and that the rhigometer, an instru-
ment constructed by Herr Duehring for measuring tem-
perature will be found to serve not only as a measure
for high or low temperature but of the ignorance and
arrogance of Herr Duehring. London, li June, 18/8.

II

It came to me as quite a surprise that a new edition
of this work was called for. The special" views which
it criticised are practically forgotten to-day. The work
itself has not only been placed before many thousands
of readers by its serial publication in " Vorwaerts " of
Leipsic in 1877 and 1878, but it has also been published
in large editions in its entirety. How then can there
be any further interest in what I have to say about Herr
Duehring ?

\ In the first place, I fancy, -that it is owing to the fact
that this book, as indeed, all my writings at that time,
was prohibited in Germany soon after the pijblication
of. the anti-Sociaiist laAvs. Whosoever was not fettered
by the inherited officialdom of the countries of the Holy
Alliance should have clearly seen the effect of this
measure — the double and treble sale of the prohibited
books, and the advertisement of the impotence of the
gentlemen in Berlin, who issued injunctions and could
not make them effective. Indeed the amiability of the
Government was the cause of the publication of several
new editions of my shorter writings, as I am. able to
affirm. I have no time for a proper revision of the text
and so allow it to go to press, just as it is.

But there is still an additional circumstance. The
" system " of Herr Duehring here criticised spreads over
a very extensive theoretical ground and I was compelled
to pursue him all over it and to place my ideas in an-
tagonism to his. Negative criticism thereupon became

27

28 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

positive; the polemic developed into a more or less con-
nected exposition of dialectic methods and the socialist
philosophy, of which Marx and myself are representa-
tive, and this in quite a number of places. These our
philosophic ideas have had an incubation period of about
twenty years since they were first given to the world in
Marx's " Misere de la Philosophic " and the Communist
Manifesto until they obtained a wider and wider in-
fluence through the publication of " Capital " and now
find recognition and support far beyond the limits of
Europe in all lands where a proletariat exists together
with progressive scientific thinkers. It seems that there
is also a public whose interests in this matter are suffi-
cient to induce them to purchase the polemic against
Duehring's opinions, in spite of the fact that it is now
without an object, and who evidently derive pleasure
from the positive development.

I must call attention to the fact, by the way, that the
views here set out were, for by far the most part, de-
veloped and established by Marx, and only to a very
slight degree by myself, so that it is understood that I
have not represented them without his knowledge. I
read the entire manuscript to him before sending it to
press and the tenth chapter of the section on Political
Economy was written by Marx and unfortunately had
to be somewhat abbreviated by me.

It was our wont to mutually assist each other in
special branches of work.

The present edition is with the exception of one chap-
ter an unchanged edition of the former. I had no time
■for revision although there was much in the mode of
presentation which I wanted altered. But there is in-
cumbent upon me the duty of preparing for publication
the manuscripts which Marx left, and this is much more

PREFACES 29

imoortant than anything else. Then my conscience re-
bels against making any changes. The book is contro-
versial and I have an idea that it is unfair to my an-
tagonist for me to alter anything when he cannot do
so. I could only claim the right to reply to Herr
Duehring's answer. But what Herr Duehring has writ-
ten with respect to my attack I have not read and shall
not do so, unless obliged. I am theoretically done with
him. Besides I must observe the rules of literary war-
fare all the more closely as a despicable wrong has since
been inflicted upon him by the University of Berlin.
It has been chastised for this, indeed. A university
which so/iegrades itself as to refuse permission to Herr
Duehring to teach under the known circumstances should
not be surprised if a Herr Schwenninger is forced upon
it under circumstances just as well known.

The one chapter in which I have permitted myself
any explanations is the Second of the Third Section
" Theory." Here where the sole concern is the presen-
tation of a most important part of the philosophy which
I represent, my antagonist cannot complain if I put my-
self to some trouble to speak popularly and to generalise.
This was undoubtedly a special occasion. I had made
a French translation of three chapters of the book (the
First of the Introduction and the First and Second of
the Third Section) into a separate pamphlet for my
friend Lafargue, and the French edition afterwards
served as a basis for one in Italian and one in Polish.
A German edition was provided under the title " The
Development of Socialism from Utopia to Science."
The latter has exhausted three editions in a few months
and has also made its appearance translated into Russian
and Danish. In all these publications only the chapter
in question was added to and it would have been pedantic

30 LANDMARKS OF, SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISil

in me if I had confined myself to the actual wording of
the original in the new edition in spite of the later and
international form which it had assumed. '

Where I wished to make changes had particular refer-
ence to twQ points. ' In the first pl^ce with regard to
primitive history, as far as known, to which Morgan
was the first to give us the key in 1877. In my book
" The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the
State," Zurich, 1884, I have since had an opportunity
of working up material more lately accessible which I
employed in this later work. In the second place, as. far
as that portion which is concerned with theoretical
science is concerned, the presentation of the subject is
very defective and a much more definite one could now be
given. If I did not allow myself the right of improving
it now, I should be in duty bound to pass criticism on
myself instead of the other.

Marx and I were probably the first to import the
well known dialectic of the German idealistic philosophy
into the materialistic view of nature and history. But
to a dialectical and at the same time materialistic view
of nature there pertains an acquaintance with mathemat-
ics and natural science. Marx was a sound mathema-
tician but the sciences we only knew in part, by fits and
starts, sporadically. After I retired from mercantile
pursuits and went to London and had time, I made as
far as possible a complete mathematical and scientific
" molting," as Liebig calls it, and spent the best part of
eight years on it. I was occupied with this molting
process when it chanced that I was called upon to busy
myself with Herr Duehring's so-called philosophy. If,
therefore, I often fail to find the correct technical ex-
pression, and am a little awkward in the field of natural
science it is onlv too natural. On the other hand the

PREFACES 31

consciousness of insecurity which I have not yet got
over has made me cautious. Actual blunders respecting
facts up to the present known, and incorrect presenta-
tions of theories thus far recognised cannot be proved
against me. In this relation just one great mathema-
tician, who is laboring under a mistake, has complained
to Marx in a letter that I have made a mischievous at-
tack upon the honor of the square root of minus one.
As regards my review of mathematics and the natural
science it was necessary for me to reassure myself on
some special points — since I had no doubts about the
truth of the general proposition — that in nature the
same dialectic laws of progress fulfill themselves amid
all the apparent confusion of innumerable changes as
dominate the apparently accidental in nature; the same
laws whose threads traverse the progressive history
of human thought, and little by little come to the con-
sciousness of thinking men. These were first developed
by Hegel in a comprehensive fashion but in a mystical
form. Our efforts wer,e directed towards stripping
away this mystical form and making them evident in
their full simplicity and universal reality. It was self
evident that the old philosophies of nature — in spite of
all their actual value and fruitful suggestiveness —
could be of no value to us. There was an error in the
Hegelian form, as shown in this book, in that it recog-
nised no progression of nature in time, no " one after an-
other " (Nacheinander) but merely "one besides an-
other," (Nebeneinander). This was due on the one
hand to the Hegelian system itself which ascribed to
the Spirit (Geist) alone u progressive historical de-
velopment, but on the other hand, the general attitude
of the natural sciences was responsilile. So Hegel fell
far behind Kant in this respect for the latter had al-

32 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

ready by his nebular hypothesis proclaimed the origin
and, by his discovery of the stoppage of the rotation of
the earth through the tides, the destruction of the solar
system. And finally, I could not undertake to construct
the dialectical laws of nature but to discover them in it
and to develop them from it.

To do this entirely and in each separate division is a
colossal task. Not only is the ground to be covered al-
most immeasurable but on this entire ground natural
science is involved in such tremendous changes that even
those who have all their time to give can hardly" keep
up with it. Since the death of Marx however my mind
has been occupied by more pressing duties and so I had
to interrupt my work. -I must, for the moment, confine
myself to the hints in the work before uS and wait for a
later opportunity to correct and publish the results ob-
tained, probably together with the most important manu-
scripts on mathematics left behind by Marx.

But the advance ofHheoretical science makes my work
in all probability, in a great measure, or altogether, super-
fluous. Since the revolution which overturned theoret-
ical science the necessity of arranging the accumulation
of purely empirical discoveries has caused the opposing
empiricists to pay more and more attention to the dia-
lectical character -of the operations of nature. The old
stiff antagonisms, the sharp impassable frontier lines are
becoming more and more abolished. Since the last
" true " gases have been liquefied, since the proof that a
body can be put in a condition in which liquid and
gaseous forms cannot be differentiated, aggregate con-
ditions have to the last remnant lost their earlier absolute
character. With the statement of the kinetic theory of
gases that, in gases, the squares of the speeds with which
the separate gas molecules move are in inverse ratio

PREFACES 33

to the molecular weights, under the same temperature,
heat takes its place directly in the series of such measur-
able forms of motion. Ten years ago the newly dis-
covered great fundamental law of motion was still un-
derstood as a mere law of the conservation of energy,
as a mere expression of the indestructibility and un-
creatibility of motion, and therefore merely on its quan-
titative side. That narrow negative expression has been
more and more subordinated to the transformation of
energy, in which the qualitative content of the process is
duly recognised and the last notion of an extramundane
Creator is destroyed. That the quantity of motion (of
energy, so called) is not changed when it is transformed
into kinetic energy (mechanical force, so called), into
electricity, heat, potential static energy need not now be
preached any longer as something new, it served as the
foundation, once attained, of many valuable investiga-
-tions of the process of transformation itself, of the great
fundamental process, in tJhe knowledge of which is
comprehended the knowledge of all nature. And since
biology has been treated in the light of the theory of
evolution it has aboli,shed one stiflf line of classification
after another in the realm of organic nature. The en-
tirely unclassified intermediate conditions increase in
number every day. Later investigations throw organ-
isms out of one class into another, and marks of distinc-
tion which have become articles of faith lose their in-
dividual reality. We have now mammals which lay
eggs and, if the news is established, birds also which
go on all fours. It was already observed, before the
time of Virchow, as a conclusion of the discovery of
the cell, that the identity of the individual creature is
lost, scientifically and dialectically speaking, in a federa-
tion of cells, so the idea of animal (and therefore human)

34 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

individuality is still further complicated by the discovery
of the amoeba in the bodies of the higher animals con-
stituting the white blood corpuscles. And these are just
the things which were considered polar opposites, ir-
reconcilable and insoluble, the fixed boundaries and
differences of classification, which have given modern
theoretical science its limited and metaphysical character.
The knowledge that these distinctions and antagonisms
actually do occur in nature, but only relatively, and that
on the other hand that fixity and absoluteness are the
products of our own minds — this knowledge constitutes
the kernel of the dialectic view of nature. The view is
reached under the compulsion of the mass of scientific
facts, and one reaches it the more easily by bringing to
the dialectic character of these facts a consciousness of
the laws of dialectic thought. At all events, the scope
of science is now so great that it no longer escapes the
dialectic comprehension. But it will simplify the pro-
cess if it is remembered that the \results in which, these
discoveries are comprehended are ideas, that the art of
operating with ideas is not inborn, moreover, and is not
vouchsafed every day to the ordinary mind, but requires
actual thought, and this thought has a long history
crammed with experiences, neither more nor less than
the accumulated experiences of investigation into nature.
By these means, then, it learns how to appropriate the
results of fifteen hundred years development of philos-
ophy, it gets rid of any separate natural philosophy
which stands above or alongside of it and the limited
method of thought brought over from English empiri-
cism.
London, ssnd September, 1885.

Ill

The following new edition is, with the exception of a
very few changes in form of expression, a reproduction
of the former. Only in one chapter, namely in the Xth.
qf the Second Section (that on Critical History) I
have allowed some important emendations, for the fol-
lowing reasons. As has been stated already in the pref-
ace to the second edition, this chapter is in all its es-
sentials, the work of Marx. . In its first form, which was
intended as an article in a review, I was compelled to
abbreviate the manuscript of Marx very much, par-
ticularly in those points in which the criticism of Herr
Duehring's propositions is subordinate to the particular
development of the history of economics. But these are
just the portions of the manuscript which constitute the
greatest and most important of, as regards its permanent
interest, part of the work. The places in which Marx
gives their appropriate place in the genesis of political
economy to such writers as Petty, North, Locke and
Hume, I consider myself obliged to give as literally and
completely as possible, and still more so, his explanation
of the " economic tableaux " by Quesnay, the insoluble
riddle of the sphinx to all economists. I have omitted
however that part which dealt solely with the writings
of Herr Duehring as far as the connection permitted.
For the rest, I am perfectly well satisfied with the ex-
tent to which the views represented in this work, have
made their way into the minds of the working class and
the scientists throughout the world since the publication
of the former edition.

F. Engels.

London, 23d May, 1894.

35

CHAPTER III

INTRODUCTION

/. In General

Modern socialism is in its essence the product of the
existence on the one hand of the class antagonisms which
are dominant in modern society, between the property
possessors and those who have no property and between
the wage workers and the bourgeois ; and, on the other,
of the anarchy which is prevalent in modern produc-
tion. In its theoretical form however it appears as a ~
development of the fundamental ideas of the great
French philosophers of the eighteenth century. Like
every new theory it was obliged to attach ilself to the
existing philosophy however deeply its roots were em-
bedded m the economic fact.

The great men in France who cleared the minds of
the people for the coming revolution were themselves
uncompromisingly revolutionary. They did . not recog-
nise outside authority of any kind whatsoever. Re-
ligicn, natural science, society, the state, all were sub-
jected to the most unsparing criticism, and everything
was compelled to justify its existence before the judg-
ment seat of reason or perish. Reason was established
as the one and universal measure. It was the time when,
as Hegel said, the world was turned upside down, first
in the sense that the human mind and the principles ar-
rived at by process of thought were claimed as the foun-
dations of all human actions and social relations, but
later also, in the wider sense, that the reality which con-

36

INTRODUCXrON 37

tradicted these theories had indeed to be turned upside
down. All forms of society and the state existent here-
tofore, all survivals of old notions, were thrown into the
lumber room as unreasonable. Up to that time the
world had only allowed itself to be led by prejudice.
All that had been done deserved merely pity and con-'
tempt. Now for the first time day broke: from now
on, superstition, injustice, tyranny and privilege should
be replaced by eternal truth, eternal justice, equality
founded on natural rights and the inalienable rights of
man.-

We now know that the rule of reason was nothing
more than the rule of the bourgeoisie idealised, that
eternal right found its realisation in bourgeois justice,
that equality was materialised in bourgeois equality be-
fore the law, that when the rights of man were pro-
claimed bourgeois rights of property were proclaimed at
one and the same time, and that the state of reason, Rous-
seau's Social Contract, could only come into existence as
the bourgeois democratic republic. To such a slight
extent could the great thinkers of the eighteenth century,
just as their predecessors, prevail over the limits which"
their own epoch had placed upon them.

But besides the antagonism between feudal baron and
bourgeois there existed the general antagonism between
the, robbers and the robbed, between the rich idlers and
the toiling poor. It was just this antagonism which
made it possible for the leaders of the bourgeoisie to
pose as the representatives not merely of a special class
but of the whole of suffering humanity. Furthermore
the bourgeoisie was saddled with an antithesis right from
the start. Capitalists cannot exist without laborers, and,
in proportion, as the members of the gilds in the Middle
Ages developed into the modern bourgeois, the journey-

38 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

men of the gilds and the day laborers, on their part, de-
veloped into the proletariat. And though the bourgeois,
as a general rule, might claim to represent also the in-
terests of the different working classes of the period,
still, independent movements of the latter classes broke
out in connection with each great movement on the part
of the bourgeoisie; such working classes being the more
or less developed predecessors of the modern proletariat.
Thus there came into being at the time of the German
Reformation and the Peasant War, the party of Thomas
Munzer, in the great English Revolution the Levellers,
and in thcj great French Revolution, Baboeuf.

Besides these revolutionary demonstrations of a class
still undeveloped, occurred certain theoretical manifesta-
tions of a corresponding nature. Thus in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, Utopian pictures of an ideal
social condition, in the eighteenth century, absolutely
communistic theories (Morelly and Mably). The de-
mand for equality was confined no longer to politicg.1
rights, it had to be extended to the social condition of
individuals; the demand was made for the abolition not
merely of class privileges but of class distinctions also.
An ascetic communism patterned on that of Sparta was
the first form which the new teachings assumed. Then
came the three great Utopians — Saint Simon, in whose
eyes bourgeois aims possessed a certain merit as well as
those of the proletariat : then Fourier and Owen, who, in
the land of the most highly developed capitalistic pro-
duction, and under the influence of the antagonisms
which arise therefrom, developed in direct relation to
French materialism their proposals which tended to the
abolition of class distinctions.

One common feature pertaining to all the three is the
fact that they did not appear as the representatives of

INTRODUCTION 39

the interests of the proletariat which had been in the
meantime developed through the historical process. Like
the philosophers, their ambition is not to free a par-
ticular class but the whole world. Like them they wish
to introduce the government of reason and eternal justice.
But there is a world of difference between their govern-
ment and that of the philosophers. According to the
philosophers, the bourgeois world as it exists is unreason-
able and jmjust an<f is destined- for the rubbish heap,
just as feudalism and all other earlier forms of society.
The reason that true justice and reason have not domi-
nated the world is because up to the present man has not
properly comprehended them. That a man of genius
has appeared and that the truth concerning these things
should have now been made clear are not results arising
from a combination of historical progress and necessity,
but a mere piece of luck. He might just as well have
been born five hundred years earlier and saved mankind
the mistakes, conflicts and sorrows of five hundred
years.

This is actually the idea of all English and French
socialists and of the earlier German socialists, Weitling
included. According to this view, socialism is the ex-
pression of absolute truth, reason, and justice, and only
has to be perceived in order to vanquish the world by
reason of its truth. Hence, absolute truth, reason, and
justice vary according to each founder of a school, and
therefore with each one, the variety of absolute truth,
reason and justice is dependent, in turn, upon the sub-
jective temperament of that founder, his conditions of
life, the extent of his knowledge and mental discipline,
so that in this conflict of absolute truths there is no
possible solution save that they rub each other smooth
by mutual contact. Hence nothing could result from

40 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

it except a sort of eclectic, average socialism, which is, as
a matter of fact, up to the present, the prevailing no-
tion in the minds of the great majority of socialist agi-
tators in France and England — a mixture admitting of
manifold shades, of a few notable critical utterances,
economic teachings and pictures of a future state of so-
ciety by leaders of different sects, a mixture which flows
all the easier in proportion as the sharp precise corners
are rubbed off the separate notions in the stream of de-
bates, just as pebbles become round in a brook.

In order that a science can be made out of socialism
it is first necessary that it be placed on a sound basis.

Meanwhile, close to and just after the French phi-
losophy of the eighteenth century, the new German phi-
losophy arose and culminated in Hegel. Its greatest
service was the restoration of the dialectic as the highest
form of thought. The old Greek philosophers were all
natural dialecticians, and the most universal intellect
among them, Aristotle, was already the discoverer of the
essential forms. of dialectic thought. On the other hand,
subsequent philosophy although in it there were brilliant
exponents of the dialectic (e. g. Descartes and Spinoza),
was more and more involved in the socalled metaphysical
mode of thought, chiefly owing to English influence
which completely mastered the French philosophers, at
least of the eighteenth century. Outside of the strict
frontiers of philosophy, masterpieces of the dialectic
might be found occasionally of which I can only recall
" Rameau's Nephew " by Diderot, and the treatise upon
the origin of human inequality by Rousseau.

We now give briefly the essential features of the two
modes of thought: we will return to them more fully
later.

If we examine nature, the history of man or our own

INTRODUCTION 4I

intellectual activities, we have presented to us an endless
coil of interrelations and changes in which nothing is
constant whatever be its nature, time or position, but
every thing is in motion, suffers change, and passes away.
This original, naive and very nearly correct philosophy
of the world is -that of the old Greek philosophers and
was first put in a very clear form by Heraclitus. Every-
thing is and yet is not, since everything is in a state of
flux, is comprehended as undergoing constant modifica-
tion, as eternally existing and disappearing. But this
philosophy, correct as it is as regards phenomena in
general, viewed as a picture, is insufficient to explain the
individual phenomena of which the picture, of the uni-
verse is composed, and as long as we cannot do that we
are not clear about the general picture. In order to
study these individual phenomena we are obliged to
take them out of their natural or social connection, and
examine each of them by itself according to its own form
and its particular origin and development. This is the
task of natural science and historical investigation,
branches of discovery to which the Greeks of classical
times assigned a subordinate place for very good reasons,
since they, first of all, had to collect the material. The
beginning of an exact observation of nature was made
first by the Greeks of the Alexandrine period, and was
later developed further by the Arabs in the Middle Ages.
True natural science hence dates from the second half
of the fifteenth century, and from then on has advanced
at a constantly growing rate. The dissection of nature
into its separate parts; the separation of different natural
events and natural conditions into certain classes, the
examination of- the interiors of organic bodies with re-
spect to their manifold anatomical forms, furnished the
fundamental reasons for the progress in a knowledge of

42 LANDMARKS OF SCiENTIFIC SOCIALISM'

nature which the last four hundred years have brought
in their train. But it has caused us occasionally to drop
into the habit of regarding natural phenomena and events
as entities, apart from the great' universal interrelations,
and therefore not as moving but quiescent, not as change-
able in their essence but fixed and constant, not in their
life but in their death. And hence, just as happened
with Bacon and Locke, this point of view has been car-
ried over from science into philosophy, and has con-
stituted the specially narrow view of the last century,
the metaphysical mode of thought.

For the metaphysician, things and their pictures in
the minds, concepts, are separate entities, one following
the other without any regard to each other, stable, rigid,
eternally fixed objects of investigation. The metaphy-
sician thinks in antitheses. His conversation is " Yea,
yea ; Nay, nay " and whatsoever is more than these
cometh of evil. For him a thing exists or it does not
exist, a thing can never be itself and something else at
the same time; positive and negative are mutually ex-
clusive, cause and effect stand in stiff antagonism to
each other. This method of thought seems at the first
glance to be quite plausible because it is in accordance
with sound common sense. But sound common sense,
respectable fellow though he may be in his own home
surrounded by his four walls, meets with strange ad-
ventures when he betakes himself into the wide world
of investigation ; and the metaphysical way of looking
at things, sound and useful as it is, under given con-
ditions, runs sooner or^later into a stone wall, beyond
which it is one-sided, stupid and abstract, and loses it-
self in insoluble contradictions. Because it omits to
notice the interrelations of the individual phenomena,
their existence, their coming and their going, their static

INTRODUCTION 43

and mobile conditions, and so to speak (Joes not see the
forest for trees. We know for example, with sufficient
certainty for every day affairs, whether an animal is alive
or dead, but, on closer examination, we find that this is
sometimes no easy matter to decide, as jurists know
very well and have gone indeed to great pains to dis-
cover a rational border line beyond which -the killing of
a child in the womb of its mother is murder. It is just
as impossible too to fix the precise moment of death, for
physiology shows that death is not a single and sudden
event but a very slow process. Just so is every or-
ganic being at the same moment itself and not itself.
Every moment it takes up matter coming to it from the
outside and throws off other matter, every moment its
body-cells die and are recreated. Indeed after a longer
of shorter period the whole material of the body is
renewed through the taking up of other particles of •
matter so that each organic being is at the same time
itself and something else. We find also if we look at
the matter more closely that the two poles of an antith-
esis, positive and negative, are just as inseparable as
they are antagonistic, and that they, in spite of all their
fixed antagonisms permeate each other, also that the
cause and effect are concepts which can only realise
themselves in relation' to a particular case. However
when we come to examine the separate case in its gen-
eral relation to the world at large they come together
and dissolve themselves in face of the working out of
the universal problem, for, here, cause and effect ex-
change places, what was at one time and place effect
becoming cause and vice versa.

All these phenomena and thought-concepts do not fit
into the frame of metaphysical philosophy. According
to the dialectic method of thinking which regards things

44 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

and their concepts in relation to their connection with
each other, their concatenation, their coming into being
and passing away, phenomena, Hke the preceding, are so
many confirmations of its own philosophy. Nature is
the proof of the dialectic, and we must give to modern
science the credit of having furnished an extraordinary
wealth and daily increasing store of material towards
this proof, and thereby showing in the last instance
things proceed dialectically and not in accordance with
metaphysical notions. But as the scientists who have
learned to think dialectically may be still easily counted,
the chaos arising from the confusion between actual re-
sults and an antiquated mode of thought is thus ex-
plained, and this confusion is to-day dominant in
theoretical science, and drives teachers and pupils, writ-
ers and readers to despair. _

A correct notion of the universe, of the human race,
as well as of the reflection of this progress in the human
mind can only be had by means of the dialectic method,
together with a steady observation of the change and
interchange which goes on in the universe, the coming
into existence and passing away, progressive and retro-
gressive modification.

And the later German philosophy has proceeded from
this standpoint. Kant began his career in this way by
abolishing Newton's conception of a stable solar sys-
tem which persisted after receiving its first impulse, in
favor of a historical process, to wit, the origin of the
sun and all the planets from a rotating mass of nebulae.
From this concept he drew the conclusion that, granted
this origin, the future dissolution of the solar system
is inevitable. His theory was mathematically proved
by Laplace half a century later, and half a century later
still the spectroscope discovered the existence of such

INTRODUCTION 45

glowing masses of gas in space in different stages of
condensation.

This later German philosophy found its conclusion in
the philosophy of Hegel where for the first time, and
this is his greatest service, the entire natural, historical
and spiritual universe was regarded as a process, that is,
as in constant progress, change, transformation and de-
velopment, and the attempt was made to show the more
subtle relations of this process and development. From
this historical point of view the history of mankind no
longer appeared as a barren confusion of mindless forces,
all alike subject to rejection before the judgment seat
of the most recently ripened philosophy, and which, at
the very best, man puts out of his mind as soon as pos-
sible, but as the development-process of humanity itself,
to follow the process of which, little by little, through
all its ramifications, and to establish the essential laws
of which, in spite of all apparent accidents, is now the
task of philosophic thought.

It is immaterial at this place that Hegel did not solve
this problem^ His epoch-making service was to have
proposed it. It is a problem, moreover, which no indi-
vidual can solve. Though Hegel, next to Saint Simon,
was the most universal intellect of his time he was still
limited, in the first place, through the necessarily narrow
grasp of his own knowledge and in addition through the
limitations of the contemporary conditions of knowl-
edge. There was a third reason, too. Hegel was an
idealist, that is he regarded thought not as a mere ab-
stract representation of real phenomena, but, on the con-
trary, phenomena and their development appeared to him
as the representations of the Idea which existed before
the world. The result was an inversion of everything,
the actual interrelations of the universe were turned

46 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

completely upside down, and though of these interrela-
tions, many single ones were set out justly and correctly
by Hegel, much of the detail is patched, labored, made
up, in short, incorrect. The Hegelian system was, to
speak briefly, a colossal miscarriage, and the last of its
kind. It rested on an incurable contradiction ; on the
other hand, it actually proclaimed the historical concep-
tion according to which human history is a process of
development, which, in its very nature, cannot find its
intellectual conclusion in the discovery of a so-called
absolute truth, on the other hand it declared itself to be
the central idea of just such an absolute truth. An all
embracing and determined knowledge of nature and his-
tory is in absolute contradiction with the foundations of
dialectic thought, but it is not denied, on the contrary, it
is strongly affirmed, that the systematic knowledge of
the entire external world may from age to age make
giant strides.

The total perversion of modern German idealism of
necessity drove men to materialism, but not, and this is
well worth noting, to the mere metaphysical mechanical
materialism of the eighteenth century. In contradiction
to the naively simple revolutionary pushing on one side of
all parlier history, modern materialism sees in history the
process of the development of society, to discover the laws
of whose development is its task. In contradistinction
to the conception of nature which prevailed among the
French philosophers, as well as with Hegel, as something
moving in a narrow circle with an eternal and unchange-
able substantial form, as Newton conceived it, and with
invariable species of organic beings, as Linnaeus thought,
materialism embraces the more recent discoveries of nat-
ural science, according to which nature has also a his-
tory in time. For the , forms of the worlds, like the

INTRODUCTION 47

species of organisms by which they are inhabited under
suitable conditions, come into being and pass away, and
the cycles of their progress, in so far as it is permissible
to use the term, take on eternally more magnificent di-
mensions. In either case it is entirely dialectic and no
longer forces a static philosophy upon the other sciences.
As soon as the demand is made upon each separate
branch of science that it make clear its relation to things
in general, and science as a whole, the individual science
thereupon becomes superfluous. Of all philosophy up
to the present time the only peculiar property which
remains as its characteristic is the study of thought and
the formal laws of thought — logic and the dialectic.
All else belongs to the positive sciences of nature and
history.

While the revolution in natural science was only able
to be completely carried out in proportion as investiga-
tion furnished the necessary positive material, there were
known a multitude of earlier historical facts which gave
a distinct bias to the philosophy of history. In 1831 in
Lyons the first purely working class revolt occurred.
The first national working class movement, that of the
English, Chartists, reached its height between 1838 and
1842. The class war between the proletariat and the
bourgeoisie proceeded historically in the most advanced
European countries just in proportion as the newly de-
veloped greater industry has progressed, on the one
hand, and the political power of the bourgeoisie on the
other. The teachings of the bourgeois economists with
respect to the identity of the interests of capital and
labor and with respect to the universal peace and well
being which would follow as a matter of course from
the adoption of free trade were more and more contra-
dicted by facts. All these things could be as little ig-

48 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

nored as the French and EngHsh socialism which was
their theoretical though very insufficient expression.
But the old idealistic philosophy of history which was
as yet by no means laid aside knew nothing of class
wars dependent upon material interests, and nothing of
material interests, specially. Production, like all eco-
nomic phenomena only occupied a subordinate position
as a secondary element of the histdry of civilisation."
The new facts, moreover rendered necessary a new in-
vestigation of all preceding history and then it became
evident that all history up to then had been a history
of class struggles and that these mutually conflicting
classes are the results of a given method of production
and distribution at a given period, in a word, of the
economic conditions of that epoch. Hence, that the
economic structure of society at a given time furnishes
the real foundations upon which the entire superstructure
of political and juristic institutions as well as the re-
ligious, philosophical and other abstract notions of a
given period are to be explained in the last instance.
Idealism was thereupon driven from its last refuge, the
philosophy of history; a materialistic philosophy of his-
tory was set up, and the path was discovered by which
the consciousness of man could be shown as springing
from his existence rather than his existence from his
consciousness.

But the socialism which had existed so far was just
as incompatible with the materialistic conception of his-
tory as was the naturalistic French materialism with the
dialectic and the modern discoveries in natural science.
The then existing socialism criticised the prevailing
capitalistic methods of production and their results but
it could not explain them and thus could not match itself
against them, it could only brush them on one side as

INTRODUCTION 49

being bad. But it was necessary to show, on the one
hand, the capitalistic methods of production in their his-
torical connection, and their necessity at a given his-
torical epoch and therefore the necessity of their ulti-
mate disappearance. On the other hand their inner
character had to be explained and this was all the more
concealed for criticism had up to then been chiefly en-
gaged in pointing out the evil results flowing from them
rather than in destroying the thing itself. This was
made clear by the discovery of surplus value.

It was shown that the appropriation of unpaid labor
is the basis of the capitalistic mode of production
and the robbery of the worker is carried out by its
means; that the capitalist, although he buys the labor-
force of the worker at the full value which it possesses
in the market as a commodity, yet derives more from it
than he has paid for it, and that in the last instance this
surplus creates the total amount of value from which
the capital steadily increasing in the hands of the capi-
talistic class is amassed. The phenomenon not only of
capitalistic production but of the creation of capital has
thus been explained.

For these two great discoveries, the materialistic con-
ception of history and the disclosure of the mystery of
capitalistic production we must thank Marx. Granted
these, socialism became a science, which thereupon had
to busy itself in the working out of these ideas in their
individual aspects and connections.

Thus matters stood in the realm of theoretical social-
ism and the dead philosophy (of metaphysics Ed.) when
Herr Eugene Duehring, with no slight impressement
sprang up before the public and announced that he had
accomplished a complete revolution in political economy
and socialism.

Let us now see what Herr Duehring promises and —
how he keeps his promia

//. What Herr Duehring Has to Say

Up to now, the notable writings of Herr Duehring
are his " Course of Philosophy," his " Course of Polit-
ical and Social Science " and his " Critical History of
Political Economy and Socialism." The first work is the
one which particularly claims our attention.

Right on the first page Herr Duehring announces
himself as " one who claims to represent this power (of
philosophy) at the present tirtie and its unfolding in the
undiscoverable future." He discovers himself,- there-
fore, as the one true philosopher for the present and
the hidden future. Whoso differs from him differs
from truth. Many people even before Herr Duehring,
have thought this about themselves or something like
it, but, with the exception of Richard Wagner, he is
the first who has allowed himself to say it right out.
And, as a matter of fact, the truth, as it is handled by
him is " a final truth of the last instance." Herr Duehr-
ing's philosophy is " the natural system, or the philoso-
phy of reality. . . . Reality is so understood as to
exclude every sudden impulse towards an unreal and
subjectively limited comprehension of the universe."
The philosophy is therefore so shaped as to exclude
Herr Duehring himself from the somewhat obvious
limitations of his own personal, subjective narrowness.
It is quite necessary to explain how this miracle is
worked, if he is in a position to lay down unquestionable

50

INTRODUCTION 5I

truths of the last instance, though, for our part, we
cannot discover any particular merit in them. This
'"' natural system of valuable knowledge " has " with
great profundity established the foundation forms of ex-
istence." Out of his, real critical attitude proceed the
elements of a real critical philosophy, based on the reali-
ties of nature and life, which does not allow of any
merely imaginary horizon but in its mighty revolution-
ary progress opens up the earth and heaven of, external
and inner nature ; it " is a " new method of thought "
and its results are " from the bottom up, peculiar re-
sults and philosophies . . . system-shaping ideas
. . . fixed truths." We have in it before us " a work
which must seek its force in the concentrated initiative,"
whatever that may mean ; an " investigation reaching
to the roots ... a rooted science . . . a se-
verely scientific conception of things and men . . .
a comprehensive thorough effort of the mind ... a
creative sketch of suppositions and conclusions from
overmastering ideas . . . the absolute funda-
mental." In the realm of political economy he gives
us not only " historical and systematic comprehensive
efforts " of which the historical are moreover distin-
guished by " my presentation of history in the grand
style " and those in political economy have produced
" creative movements," but closes with a special com-
pletely elaborated scientific scheme for a future society
which is " the actual fruit of a clear and basic theory,"
and is therefore just as free from the possibility of error
and as individual as Duehring's philosophy ... for
" only in that socialistic structure which I have disclosed
in my " Course of Political and Social Science " can a
true ownership arise in place of the present apparent

52. LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

private property which rests on force such an owner-
ship as must be recognised in the future."

These flowers of rhetoric from the praises of Herr
Duehring by Herr Duehring might be increased tenfold
with ease. They must cause a doubt to arise in the
mind of the reader whether he is reading the words
of a philosopher or of a — but we must ask him to
withhold his judgment until he shall have learnt the
aforesaid grasp of the root of things by a closer ac-
quaintance. We only quote the foregoing flowery re-
marks to show that we have to do with no ordinary
philosopher and socialist who simply speaks what he
thinks and leaves the future to decide with respect to
their value, but with an extraordinary personality like
the Pope whose individual teachings must be received
if the damnable sin of heresy is to be avoided. We
have not by any means to deal with the kind of work
which abounds in all the socialist writings, and the later
German ones, in particular, works in which people of
varying calibre seek to explain in the most naive fashion
their notions of things in general and for an answer
to whom there is more or less material available. But
whatever may be the Uterary or scientific deficiencies
of these works their goodwill towards socialism is al-
ways manifest. On the other hand, Herr Duehring
presents us with statements which he declares to be final
truths of the last instance, exclusive truths, according
to which any other opinion is absolutely false. Thus
he owns the only scientific methods of investigation, and
all others are unscientific in comparison. Either he is
right and we are face to face with the greatest genius
of our time, the first superhuman, because infallible,
man; or he is wrong, and then, since our judgment may
always be at fault, benevolent regard for his possible

INTRODUCTION 53

good intentions would be the deadliest insult to Herr
Duehring.

When one is in possession of final truths of the last
instance and the only absolutely scientific knowledge one
must have a certain contempt for the rest of erring and
unscientific humanity. We cannot therefore be surprised
that Herr Duehring employs very abusive terms with
regard to his predecessors, and that only a few excep-
tional people, recognised by him as great men, find
favor in face of his comprehension of fundamental truths.

(Then follows a list of the epithets applied by Dileh-
ring to philosophers, naturalists, Darwin, in particular,
and to the socialist writers. This list has been omitted
as it contributes nothing of value to the general discus-
sion and is only useful for the particular controversial
matter in hand. Ed.)

And so on — and this is only a hastily gathered bou-
quet of flowers from Herr Duehring's rose garden. It
will be understood that if these amiable insults which
should be forbidden Herr Duehring on any grounds of
politeness, are found somewhat disreputable and unpleas-
ant, they are, still, final truths of the last instance. Even
now we shall guard against any doubt of his profundity
because we might otherwise be forbidden to discover the
particular category of idiots to which we belong. We
have but considered it our duty on the one hand to give
what Herr Duehring calls " The quintessence of a modest
mode of expression," and on the other hand, to
show that in Herr Duehring's eyes the objectionableness
of his predecessors is no less firmly established than his
own infallibility. Accordingly if all this is actually true
we bow in reverence humbly before the mighty genius
of modem times.

CHAPTER IV

PHILOSOPHY

Apriorism

Philosophy is, according to Herr Duehring, the de-
velopment of the highest forms of consciousness of the
world and life, and embraces, in a wider sense, the prin-
ciples of all knowledge and volition. Wherever a series
of perceptions, or motives or a group of forms of life
becomes a matter of consideration in the human mind
the principles which underly these forms, of necessity,
become an object of philosophy. These principles are
single, or, up to the present, have been considered as
single ingredients out of which are composed the com-
plexities of knowledge and volition. Like the chemical
composition of material bodies, the entire uniyerse may
be also resolved into fundamental forms and elements.
These elementary constituents and principles serve, when
once discovered, not only for the known tangible world
but for that also, which is unknown and inaccessible.
Philosophical principles therefore constitute the last com-
plement required by the sciences in order that they may
become a uniform system by means of which nature and
human life are explained. In addition to the examina-
tion of the fundamental forms of all existence, philoso-
phy has only two particular objects of investigation,
Nature and Humanity. Hence our material may be clas-
sified into three main groups, — a general schenje of the
universe, the teaching of the principles of nature and
finally the principles which regulate Humanity. This

54

PHILOSOPHY 55

arrangement at the same time comprises an inner logical
order, for the formal principles which are true for all
existence take precedence, and the concrete realms in
which these principles display themselves follow in the
gradation of their successive arrangements. So far, this
is Herr Duehring's conception of things given almost
in his very words.

He is therefore engaged with principles, formal con-
ceptions, which are subjective and not derived from the
knowledge of external phenomena, but which are applied
to Nature and Humanity, as the principles according to
which Nature and Humanity must regulate themselves.
But how are these subjective principles derived? From
thought itself ? No, for Herr Duehring himself says :
the purely ideal realm is limited to logical arrangements
and mathematical conceptions (which latter as we shall
later see is false). Logical arrangements can only be
referred to forms of thought, but we are engaged here
only with forms of existence, the external world, and
these forms can never be created by thought nor derived
from it but only from the external world. Hereupon
the entire matter undergoes a change. We see that
principles are not the starting point of investigation but
the conclusion of it, they are not to be applied to nature
and history but are derived from them. Nature and
Humanity are not steered by principles, but principles
are, on the other hand, only correct so far as they corre-
spond with nature and history. That is just the ma-
terialistic conception of the matter, and the opposite, that
of Herr Duehring is the idealistic conception, it turns
things upside down and constructs a real world out of
the world of thought, arrangements, plans and categories
existing from everlasting before the world, just like
Hegelianism.

56 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

' As a matter of fact, we prefer Hegel's " Encyclope-
dia," with all its fever phantoms, to the " final truths
of the last instance " of Herr Duehring. In the first
place, according to Herr Duehring we have the general
scheme of the universe which by Hegel is called " logic."
Then according to both of them we have the application
of this scheme to nature by means of the logical catego-
ries, the philosophy of nature, and finally their ajDplica-
tion to Humanity, by what Hegel calls " the Philosophy
of the Spirit." " The inner logical arrangement " of
Duehring's scheme brings us therefore logically back to
Hegel's " Encyclopedia " from which it is taken with a
fidelity which would move that Wandering Jew of the
Hegelian school. Professor Michelet of Berlin, to tears.

Such a result follows if one takes it for granted that
" consciousness," " thought," is something which has
existed from the beginning in contradistinction to na-
ture. It would then be of the greatest importance to
bring consciousness and Nature, thought and existence,
into harmony, to harmonise the laws of thought and the
laws of Nature. But one enquires further what are
thought and consciousness and whence do they origi-
nate. It is consequently discovered that they are prod-
ucts of the brain of man, and that Humanity is itself a
product of nature which has developed in and along
with its environment ; wherefore it becomes self-apparent
that the products of the brain of man being" themselves,
in the last instance, natural products, do not contradict
all the rest of Nature but correspond with it.

But Herr Duehring cannot allow so simple a treatment
of the subject. He thinks not only in the name of Hu-
manity which would be quite a large affair, but in the
name of the conscious and thinking beings of the whole
universe. Indeed, it would be " a degradation of the

PHILOSOPHY 57

/

foundation concepts of knowledge and consciousness if
one should wish to exclude or even to throw suspicion
upon their sovereign value and undoubted claims to
truth by means of the epithet ' human.' " In order that
there may be no suspicion that upon some heavenly body
or other twice two may make five, Herr Duehring does
not venture to call thought a human attribute, and there-
fore he is obliged to separate it from the only true foun-
dation on which it rests, as far as we are concerned,
namely, from man and nature, and thereby falls, without
any possibility of getting out, into an " ideology " which
causes him to play baby to Hegel„, It is self-evident
that one cannot build materialistic doctrines on founda^-
tions so ideological. We shall see later that Herr
Duehring is compelled to push nature to the front as
a conscious agent and, therefore, i as that, which people
in plain English call God.

Indeed, our philosopher had othtr motives in shifting
the foundation of reality from the material world to
that of thought. The knowledge of this general scheme
of the universe, of these formal principles of being is
jiist the foundation of Herr Duehring's philosophy. If
we derive the scheme of the universe not from our own
brain, but merely by .means of our own brain, from the
material world, we need no philosophy, but simply
knowledge of the world and what occurs in it, and the
results of this knowledge likewise do not constitute a
philosophy, but positive science. In such a case, how-
ever, Herr Duehring's entire book would have been
love's labor lost.

Further, if no philosophy, as such, is longer required
there is no longer the necessity of any philosophy of
nature even. The view that all the phenomena of nature
stand in systematic mutual relations compels science to

58 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

prove this systematic interconnection in all respects, in
single cases as ' well as in the entirety. But an appro-
priate creative, scientific representation of this mutual
connection in such a way as to show the composition
of an exact thought-picture of the system of the universe
in ^ which we live remains not only for us but for all
time an impossibility. Should such a final conclusive
system of the interconnection of the various activities of
the universe, physical, as well as intellectual and his-
torical, ever be brought to completion at any point of
time in the history of the human race, human knowledge
would forthwith come to an end and future historical
progress would be cut off from the very moment in
which society was directed in accordance with the sys-
tem, which would be an absurdity, mere nonsense.

Man is therefore confronted by a contradiction, on the
one hand he is obliged to study the interconnections of
the world-system exhaustively, and, on the other hand,
he is unable to fully accomplish the task either as re-
gards himself or as regards the system of nature. This
contradiction, however, does not consist solely in the
nature of the two factors World and Man ; it is the
main lever also of universal intellectual progress and is
solved every day and for ever in an endless progressive
development of humanity, just as mathematical prob-
lems find their solution in an endless progression of a
recurring decimal. As a matter of fact also every con-
cept of the universe is subject to objective limitations
owing to the conditions of historical knowledge, and
subjectively in addition owing to the physical and mental
make up of the author of the concept. But Herr Dueh-
ring exhibits a mdde of thought which is confined in its
application to a limited and subjective idea of the uni-
verse. We saw earlier that he was omnipresent, in all

PHILOSOPHY 59

possible forms of the universe, now we see that he is
omniscient. He has solved the final problems of science
and has nailed up tight all future knowledge.

Herr Duehring considers that he can, as with the fun-
damental forms of existence, produce aprioristically by
means of his own cogitations the whole of pure mathe-
matics without making any use of the experience which
is afforded us in the objective world. In pure mathe-
matics the understanding is engaged " in its own free
creations and imaginations " ; the concepts of number
and form are " self-sufficient objects proceeding from
themselves " and so have " a value independent of in-
dividual experience and actual objective reality."

That pure mathematics has a significance independent
of particular individual experience is quite true ■ as
are also the established facts of all the sciences and
indeed of all facts. The magnetic poles, the formation
of water from oxygen and hydrc^en, the fact that Hegel
is dead and that Herr Duehring is alive, are facts inde-
pendent of my experience or that of any other single
individual, and will be independent of that of Herr
Duehring himself, as soon as he shall sleep the sleep
of the just. But in pure mathematics the mind is not
by any means engaged with its own creations and im-
aginings. The concepts of number and form have only
come to us by the way of the real world. The ten
fingers on which men count and thereby performed the
first arithmetical calculations are anything but a free
creation of the mind. To count not only requires ob-
jects capable of being counted but the ability, when these
objects are regarded, of subtracting all qualities from
them except number and this ability is the product of
long historical development of actual experience. The
concept form is, like that of number, derived exclusively

6o LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

from the external world and is not a purely mental
product. To it things possessed of shape were neces-
sary and these shapes men compared until the concept
form was arrived at. Pure mathematics considers the
shapes and quantities of things in the actual world, very
real objects. The fact that these objects appear in a
very abstract form only superficially, conceals their
origin in the world of external nature. In order to un-
derstand these forms and qualities in their' pui:ity it is
necessary to separate them from their content and thus
one gets the point, without dimensions, the line, without
breadth and thickness, a and b, x and y, constants and
variables, and we finally first arrive at independent crea-
tions of the imagination and intellect, imaginary mag-
nitudes. Also the apparent derivation of mathematical
magnitudes from each other does not prove their aprioi;-
istic origin, but only their rational interconnection. Be-
fore one attained the concept that the form of a cylinder
was derived from the revolution of a rectangle round
one of its sides, he must have examined a number of
rectangles and cylinders even if of imperfect form.
Like all sciences, mathematics has sprung from the ne-
cessities of men, from the measurement of land and the
content of vessels, from the calculation of time and me-
chanics. But, as in every department of thought, at a
certain stage of development, laws are abstracted from
the actual phenomena, are separated from them and set
over against them, as something independent of them,
as Jaws, which apparently come from the outside, in
accordance with which the material world must neces-
sarily conduct itself. So, it has happened, in society and
the state, so, and not otherwise, pure mathematics though
borrowed from the world is applied to the world, and

PHILOSOPHY 6l

though it only shows a portion of its component factors
is all the better applicable on that account.

But as Herr Duehring imagines that the whole of
pure mathematics can be derived from the mathematical
axioms, " which according to purely logical concepts are
neither capable of proof nor in need of any, and without
empirical ingredients anywhere and that these can be
applied to the universe, he likewise imagines, in the first
place, the foundation forms of being, the single ingredi-
ents of all knowledge, the axioms of philosophy, to be
produced by the intellect of man; he imagines also that
he can derive the whole of philosophy or plan of the
imiverse from these, and that his sublime genius can
compel us to accept this, his conception of nature and
humanity. Unfortunately nature and humanity are not
constituted like the Prussians of the Manteuffel regime
of 1850.

The axioms of mathematics are expressions of the
most elementary ideas which mathematics must borrow
from logic. They may be reduced to two.

(i) The whole is greater than its part; this state-
ment is mere tautology, since the quantitatively limited
concept, " part," necessarily refers to the concept,
" whole," — in that " part " signifies no more than that
the quantitative " whole " is made up of quantitative
" parts." Since the so-called axiom merely asserts this
much we are not a step further. This can be shown to
be a tautology if we say " The whole is that which con-
sists of several parts — a part is that several of which
make up a whole, therefore the part is less than the
whole." Where the barrenness of the repetition shows
the lack of content all the more strongly.

(2) If two magnitudes are equal to a third they are
equal to one another ; this statement is, as Hegel has

62 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

t

shown, a conclusion, upon the correctness of which all
logic depends, and which is demonstrated therefore out-
side of pure mathematics. The remaining axioms with
regard to equality and inequality are merely logical ex-
tensions of this conclusion. Such barren statements are
not enticing either in mathematics or anywhere else.
To proceed we must have realities, conditions and forms
taken from real material things ; representations of lines,
planes, angles, polygons, spheres, etc., are all borrowed
from reality, and it is just naive ideology to believe the
mathematicians, who assert that the first line was made
by causing a point to progress through" space, the first
plane by means of the movement of a line, and the first
solid by revolving a plane, etc. Even speech rebels
against this idea. A mathematical figure of three di-
mensions is called a solid - — corpus solidum — and hence,
according to the Latin, a body capable of being handled.
It has a name derived, therefore, by no means from
the independent play of imagination but from solid real-
ity.

But to what purpose is all this prolixity ? After Herr
Duehring has enthusiastically proclaimed the independ-
ence of pure mathematics of the world of experience,
their apriorism, their connection with free creation and
imagination, he says " it will be readily seen that these
mathematical elements (number, magnitude, time, space,
geometric progression), are therefore ideal forms with
relation to absolute magnitudes and therefore something
quite empiric, no matter to what species they belong."
But " mathematical general notions are, apart from ex-
perience, nevertheless capable of sufficient characteriza-
tion," which latter proceeds, more or less, from each
abstraction, but does not by any means prove that it is
not deprived from the actual. In the scheme of the

PHILOSOPHY 63

universe of our author pure mathematics originated in
pure thought, in his philosophy of nature it is derived
from the external world and then set apart from it.
Wliat are we then to beheve?

The Scheme of the Universe.

" All-comprehending existence is sole. It is sufficient
to itself and has nothing above or below it. To asso-
ciate a second existence with it would be to make it just
what it is not, a part of a constituent or all-embracing
whole. When we conceive of our idea of soleness as a
frame there is nothing which can enter into this, nothing
which retains twofoldness can enter into this concept
of unity. But nothing can alienate itself from this con-
cept of unity. The essence of all thought consists in
uniting the elements of consciousness in a unity. The
indivisible concept of the universe has arisen by com-
prehending everything, and the universe, as the word
signifies, is recognised as something in which everything
is united into one unity."

So far Herr Duehring is quoted. The mathematical
method, " Everything must be decided on simple axio-
matic foundation principles, just as if it were concerned
with the simple principles of mathematics," this method
is for the first time here applied.

" The all-embracing existence is sole." If tautology,
simple repetition in the predicate of what has been
stated in the subject, if this constitutes an axiom, then
we have a splendid specimen. In the subject Herr
Duehring tells us that existence comprehends everything,
in the predicate he explains intrepidly that there is
nothing outside' it. What a system-shaping thought.
It is indeed system-shaping until we find six line.' fur-
ther down that Herr Duehring has transformed the sole-

64 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

ness of being by means of our idea of unity into its
one-ness. As the work of all thought consists in the
bringing together of all thought into a unity so is exist-
ence, as soon as it is conceived, thought of as a unity,
an indivisible concept of the universe, and because ex-
istence so conceived is the sole universal concept, so is
real existence, the real universe, just as much an indi-
visible unity, and consequently " the beings in the be-
yond have no further place as soon as the mind has
learned to comprehend existence in the homogeneous
universality."

That is a campaign with which in comparison Auster-
litz and Jena, Koeniggratz and Sedan sink in insignifi-
cance. In a couple of expressions after we have set the
first axiom moving we have abolished, put away, and
destroyed all the inhabitants of the spirit-world, God,
the heavenly hierarchies, heaven, hell and purgatory as
well as the immortality of the soul.

How do we arrive at the idea of the unity of existence
from that of its soleness? As a matter of fact, we
generally conceive it. As we spread out our idea of
unity as a frame around it the concept of existence be-
comes the concept of unity., for the existence of all
thought consists in the bringing of elements of conscious-
ness into unity.

This last statement is simply false. In the first place
thought consists in tlje decomposition of objects of con-
sciousness into their elements as well as in the uniting
of mutually connected elements into a unity. There
can be no synthesis withoiit analysis. In the second
place, thought can, without error, only bring those ele-
ments of consciousness into a unity in which or in the
actual prototypes of which this unity already existed
beforehand. If I comprehend a shoebrush under the

PHILOSOPHY 65

class mammal, it does not thereupon 'become a milk-giver.
The unity of existence is therefore just the thing which
had to be proved in order to justify his concept of
thought as a unity, and if Herr Duehring assures us
that he regards existence as a unity and not as twofold
he tells us nothing more than that he himself personally
thinks so.

To give a clear explanation of his method of reason-
ing, it is as follows, " I begin with existence. There-
fore I think of existence. The iclea of existence is an
idea of unity. Thought and existence must therefore be-
long together, they answer one another, they mutually
cover each other. Therefore existence is in reality a
unity and there are no beings beyond." But if Herr
Duehring had spoken thus plainly instead of entertaining
us with oracular statements, the ideology of his argument
would have been completely exposed. To attempt to un-
dertake to prove from the identity of''thought and exist-
ence the reality of the result of thought, that indeed were
one of the fever-phantoms of a Hegel.

If his entire method of proof were really correct Herr
Duehring would not have gained a single point over
the spiritists. The spiritists would curtly reply, " The
universe is simple from our standpoint also. The divi-
sion into the hither and the beyond only exists from
our special earthly original sin standpoint. In its es-
sence, that is God, the entire universe is a unity." And
they will take Herr Duehring with them to his beloved
heavenly bodies, and will show him one or more where
no original sin can be found, and where there is there-
fore no antagonism between the hither and the beyond,
and the oneness of the universe is a demand of faith.

The most comical thing about the matter is that Herr
Duehring in order to prove the non-existence of God

66 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

from his concept of existence, furnishes the ontological
proof of God's existence. This runs as follows — If
we think of God we think of Him as the concept of
complete perfection. To the idea of perfection existence
is a first essential, since a non-existent being is of neces-
sity imperfect. We must therefore add existence to the
perfections of God. Therefore God must exist. Thus
Herr Duehring reasons exactly. If we think of exist-
ence we think of it as a concept. What is united into a
concept is a unity, therefore existence would not cor-
respond with its concept if it were not a unity. There-
fore it must be a unity, therefore there is no God, etc.

If we speak of existence and merely of existence, the
unity can only consist in this that all objects with which
it is concerned are — exist. They are comprised under
the unity of this common existence, and no other, and
the general dictum that they all exist cannot give them
any further qualities, common or not common, but ex-
cludes all such from consideration in advance. For as
soon as we take a step beyond the simple fact that exist-
ence is common to all things, the distinctions between
these separate things engage our attention, and if -these
differences consist in this that some are black, some
white, some alive, others not alive, some hither and
some beyond, we cannot conclude therefrom that mere
existence can be imputed to all of them alike.

The unity of the universe does not consist in its exist-
ence, although its existence is a presumption of its
unity, since it must first exist before it can be a unit.
Existence beyond the boundary line of our horizon is an
open question. The real unity of the universe consists
in its materiality, and this is established, not by a pair
of juggling phrases but by means of a long and difficult
development of philosophy and natural science.

PHILOSOPHY 67

With respect to the subject in hand; the existence
which Herr Duehring presents to us is " not that pure
existence which is self sufficient and without any other
quaHties, in fact, only representing the antithesis of
no-idea or absence-of-idea." Now we shall very soon
see that the universe of Herr Duehring has its origin
simultaneously with an existence which is without essen-
tial differentiation, progress or change, and is therefore
merely in fact a contradiction of absence of thought,
therefore really nothing. From this non-existence is
developed the present differentiated, changeable universe
which represents progressive growth ; and when we grasp
this idea, only by virtue of this eternal change do we
arrive at " the concept of the self sufficing, universal
existence." We have therefore now the concept of ex-
istence on a higher plane where it comprises within itself
stability as well as change, being as well as development.
Arrived at this point we find that " species and genera
in fact the special and the general, are the simplest forms
of differentiation, without which the constitution of
things cannot be grasped."

But this is a means of distinguishing quality and after
a discussion of this part of the subject we proceed " Over
against the idea of species stands the idea of the whole,
a homogeneity, as it were, in which no differentiation of
species can longer be found," so we pass from quality
to quantity and this is always " capable of measure-
ment."

Let us compare this " clear analysis of the actual, uni-
versal scheme of things " and its " real, critical stand-
point " with the fever-phantasies of a Hegel. We find
that Hegel's " Logic " begins with existence as does that
of Herr Duehring; that existence displays itself as noth-
ing, as with Herr Duehring; that out of this not-be-

68 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

ing, a leap is made into being, and that existence is the
result of this, that is a more complete and higher form
of being, as with Herr Duehring. Being leads to qual-
ity, quality to quantity, just as with Herr Duehring.
And in order that no essential shall be lacking Herr
Duehring tells us elsewhere " from the realm of absence
of sensation man leaps to that of sensation in spite of all
the quantitative steps with but one qualitative leap . . .
from which we can show that he is entirely differentiated
from the mere gradation of one and the same quality."
This is just the Hegelian standard of measurement ac-
cording to which mere quantitative expansion or con-
traction causes a sudden qualitative change at a given
point, as for example with heated or cooled water, there
are points where the spring into a new set of conditions
is fulfilled under normal circumstances, and where there-
fore quantity suddenly changes into quality.

Our investigation has likewise sought to penetrate to
the deepest roots, and discovers the rooted Duehring
foundations to be the " fever-phantasies " of a Hegel,
the categories of the Hegelian logic, in the first place,
teachings in regard to existence after the antique Hegel-
ian method, and an ineffective cloak of plagiarism.

And not content with purloining the whole scheme of
existence from his despised predecessors, Herr Duehring
after giving the above example of a change of quantity
into quality has the coolness to say of Mafx, " Is it not
comical, this appeal (of Marx) to Hegelian confusion
and mistiness, that quantity changes into quality." Con-
fused mixture, who changes his ground, who is a comical
fellow Herr Duehring?

All these pretty little statements are not only not
" axiomatic utterances " according to label, but are simply
taken from foreign sources, that is, from Hegel's

PHILOSOPHY 69

" Logic." Of a truth there is not revealed in the whole
chapter the shadow of any " inner connection," except
so far as it is borrowed from Hegel, and the whole talk
about stability and change finally runs out into mere
garrulity on the subject of time and space.

From existence Hegel comes to substance, to the
dialectic. Here he treats of reflex-movements, antag-
onisms and contradictions, positive and negative for^ex-
ample, and thence proceeds to causality, or the conditions
of cause and effect and closes with necessity. Herr
Duehring does not vary this method. What Hegel calls
the " doctrines of existence " Herr Duehring has trans-
lated into " logical properties of existence." These exist,
above all else in the antagonism of forces, in antithesis,
Herr Duehring denies the antithesis in toto, but we shall
return to this matter later. Then he proceeds to caus-
ality and thence to necessity. If Herr Duehring says of
himself, " I do not philosophise from a cage," he must
mean that he philosophises in a cage, the cage of the
Hegelian arrangement of categories.

CHAPTER V

NATURAL I'HILOSOPHV

Time and Space

We now come to natural philosophy. Here again
Herr Duehring takes it upon himself to be dissatisfied
w^th his predecessors. He says " Natural philosophy
sank so low that it became barren dregs of poetry and
had fallen into the degraded rubbish of the sham phi-
losophy of a Schelling and the hke, grubbing in priest-
craft and mystifying the public." Disgust has rid us of
these deformities, but up to the present it has been suc-
ceeded by instability, and " what is of concern to the
public at large is that the disappearance of a particularly
great charlatan merely gives an opportunity to a smaller^
but more expert successor who repeats the production in
another form." Naturalists have little desire for " a
flight into the kingdom of the universe-comprehending
ideas," and therefore indulge too freely in speculations
which " go to pieces." Thus complete salvation must be
found, and, fortunately, Herr Duehring is at hand.

In order to comprehend aright the following con-
clusions respecting the unfolding of the universe in time
and its limitation in space, we must again turn our at-
tention to certain portions of the " scheme of the uni-
verse."

Eternity is ascribed to existence, in agreement with
Hegel, what Hegel calls "tiresome (schlecht) eternity,"

70

NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 7I

and this eternity is now iijvestigated. " The plainest
form of an incontrovertible idea of eternity is the piling
up of numbers unlimitedly in arithmetical progression.
Just as we can give a complete unity to each number
without the possibility of repetition, so at every stage of
its being it progresses still further and eternity consists
in the unlimited manifestation of this condition. This suf-
ficiently conceived eternity has but one single beginning
with one single direction. Although it is not material to
our concept to imagine a direction opposite to that in
which the progression piles up, this notion of a backward
moving eternity is only a hasty picture drawn by the
imagination. Since it must necessarily run in a contrary
direction, it would have behind it in each instance an
endless succession of numbers. But this would be in-
admissible as constituting the contradiction of a cal-
culated infinity of numbers, and so it seems absurd to
imagine a second direction of eternity,"

The first conclusion to be drawn from this conception
of eternity is that the chain of cause and effect in the
universe must once have had a beginning: an endless
number of causes which have followed one another end-
lessly is therefore unthinkable, "because innumerability
is thus considered as enumerated," therefore a final cause
is proved.

The second conclusion is " the law of the definite num-
ber: the accumulation of identical independent objects of
an actual species is only thinkable as being made up of
a definite number of these individual objects." Not only
must t^e actual number of the heavenly bodies be definite
at a given time, but the total number of all existent ob-
jects, the smallest independent particles of matter. This
last necessity constitutes the real reason why no com-
posite body is thinkable except as made up of atoms. All

^2 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

actual division has a fixed limit and must have it, if the
contradiction of a numerated innumerability is to be
avoided. On the same grounds not only must the revo-
lutions of the sun and earth be fixed as they have oc-
curred up to the present, even if they cannot be indicated,
but all the periodical processes of nature must have had
a beginning somewhere, and all the distinctions and
complexities of nature which succeed each other must
similarly have had an origin. This must indisputably
have existed from eternity, but such an idea would
be excluded if time consisted of real parts and
was not arbitrarily divided to accommodate the possi-
bilities of our understanding. It is different with time,
self regarded, but the facts and phenomena of which
time is made up being capable of differentiation can be
enumerated. Let us conceive of a condition in which
no change occurs and which undergoes no alteration in
its stable identity; the time concept then becomes trans-
formed into the general notion of existence. What is
the result of piling up an empty duration of time is not
discoverable. So far, Herr Duehring writes and he is
not a little edified concerning the significance of these
discoveries. He hopes that " it is perceived as a not
insignificant truth," and later on says, " One should note
the very simple phrases by which we have helped the
concept of immortality and the criticism of it to a point
at present unknown, through the sharpening and deep-
ening of the simple elements of the universal conception
of time and space."

We have helped ! This deepening and sharpening !
Who are we ? In what are we manifest ? Who deepens
and who sharpens?

" Thesis — the world has a beginning in time and is
bounded by space. Proof — If one suppose that the

NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 73

world has no beginning in time he is bound to grant
infinity to each point of time, and so an infinite succession
of things has passed away in the universe. But infinity
of a series consists in the impossibility of its completion
by successive syntheses. Therefore an eternal progres-
sion of the world is impossible. Hence a beginning of
the world is a necessary condition of its existence,
which was to be proved. Let us take the other concept.
The world now appears as an eternal given whole con-
sisting of things which have a simultaneous existence.
Now we can conceive of the mass of a quantity, which
can only be regarded under certain conditions, in no
other way than by means of the synthesis of its parts,
and we conceive the totality of the quantity by means of
the completed synthesis or repeated additions of the unity
to itself. Thus, in order to conceive of the universe as
a whole which fills all space, the successive syntheses of
the parts of an infinite universe must be regarded as
being completed, that is an eternity of time must in cal-
culating all coexisting things, be regarded as having ex-
isted, but this is impossible. Therefore an unending
aggregate of actual things cannot be regarded as a given
whole -and therefore also not as coexistent. A world
is therefore extension in space which is not unlimited
and which has therefore bounds. And this was the sec-
ond thing to be proved."

These statements are copied from a well-known book
which made its appearance in 1781 and is entitled " The
Critique of Pure Reason," by Immanuel Kant. They
can be read there in Part I, Division 2, second section,
second part. " First Antinomy of Pure Reason." To
Herr Duehring alone remains the name ind fame of hav-
ing pasted the law of fixed numbers on one of the pub-
lished thoughts of Kant and of having made the discoy-

74 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

cry that there was once a time when time did not exist
but only a universe. For the rest, therefore, when we
come across anything sensible in HerrTDuehringV exposi-
tion " We " means Immanuel Kant, and the " present "
is only ninety-five years old. Quite simple indeed, and
unknown until now! But Kant does not establish the
above statement by his proof. On the other hand, he
shows the reverse, namely, that the universe has no be-
ginning in time and no end in space, and he fixes his
antinomy in this, the unsolvable contradiction that the
one is just as capable of proof as the other. People of
small calibre might be inclined to think that here Kant
had found an insuperable difficulty, not so our bold au-
thor of fundamental results " especially his own." He
copies all that he can use of Kant's antinomy and throws
the rest away.

The matter solves itself very simply. Eternity in
time and endlessness in space signify from the very
wojds that there is no end in either direction, forwards
or backwards, over or under, right or left. This infinity
is quite different from an endless progression, since the
latter always has some beginning, a first step. The in-
applicability of this progression idea to our object is evi-
dent directly we apply it to space. Jnfinite progression
translated in terms of space is a line produced continu-
ously in a given direction. Is infinity in space expressed
in this way, even remotely? On the contrary it requires
six of these lines drawn from this point in three opposite
directions to express the dimensions of space and we
should have accordingly six of these dimensions. Kant
saw this so plainly that he employed his progression
merely indirectly in a round about way to express the
extent of the universe. Herr Duehring on the contrary
forces us to accept his six dimensions of space and at

NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 75

the same time has no words in which to express his
contempt of the mathematical mysticism of Gauss who
would not content himself with the three dimensions of
space.

Applied to time, the series or row of objects, infinite
at both extremities, has a certain figurative significance.
But let us picture time as proceeding from unity or a line
proceeding from a fixed point. We can say then that
time Jias had a beginning. We assume just what we
wanted to prove. We give a one-sided half-character to
infinity of time. But a one-sided eternity split in halves
is a contradiction in itself, the exact opposite of a hypo-
thetical infinity, incapable of contradiction. We can only
overcome this contradiction by assuming that the unity
which we began to count the progression from, the point
from which we measure the line, is a unity taken at pleas-
ure in the series, a point taken at pleasure in the line.
Hence as far as the line or series is concerned it is im-
material where we put it.

But as for the contradiction of the " counted endless
progression " we shall be in a position to examine it
more closely as soon as Herr Duehring has taught us
the trick of reckoning it. If he has accomplished the
feat of counting from minus infinity to zero, we shall
be glad to hear from him again. It is clear that wherever
he begins to count he leaves behind him an endless pro-
gression, and with it the problem which he had to solve.
Let him only take his own infinite progression i -f- 2 -|-
3 -j- 4 etc. and try to reckon back to i again from the
infinite end. He evidently does not comprehend the re-
quirements of the problem. And furthermore, if he
affirms that the infinite progression of past time is cap-
able of calculation he must affirm that time has a begin-
ning for otherwise he could not begin to calculate:

76 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

Therefore he again substitutes a supposition for what
he had to prove. The idea of the calculated infinite
series, in other words Duehring's all-embracing law of
the fixed number, is therefore a contradiction iri adjecto,
is a self contradiction, and an absurd one, moreover.

It is clear that an infinity which has an end but no
beginning is neither more nor less than an infinity which
has a beginning but no end. The least logical insight
would have compelled Herr Duehring to the statement
that beginning and end are mutually necessary to each
other, like North Pole and South Pole, and that if one
omit the end the beginning becomes the end, the one
end which the series has and vice versa.

The entire fallacy would not be possible if it were not
for the mathematical practice of operating with an in-
finite series. Because in mathematics one must proceed
from the given and finite to that which is not given and
infinite, all mathematical series whether positive or nega-
tive, begin with a fixed point otherwise one cannot cal-
culate. The ideal necessities of the mathematician how-
ever are very far from being a law compulsory upon the
universe.

Besides Herr Duehring will never succeed in imagin-
ing an infinity without contradiction. In the first place,
infinity is a contradiction and full of contradictions.
For example it is a contradiction that infinity should be
made up of finite things and yet such is the case. The
notion of a limited universe leads to contradictions just
as much as the notion of its unlimitedness, and each at-
tempt to abolish these contradictions leads, as we have
seen, to new and worse contradictions. But just be-
cause infinity is a contradiction, it is without end, end-
lessly developing itself in time and space. The aboli-
tion of "the contradiction would be the end of infinity.

NATURAL PHILOSOPHY "J"]

Hegel saw that very clearly, and covers the people who
entered upon intricate arguments about this contradic-
tion with merited scorn.

Let us proceed. Now, time has had a beginning.
What was before this beginning? The unchangeable
universe incomparable with anything else. And as no
changes occur in this condition the particular concept
time is transformed into the general concept existence.
In the first place we have nothing to do with the trans-
formation which goes on in the brain of Herr Duehring.
We are not engaged with a concept of time, but with
actual time of which Herr Duehring cannot so easily
dispose. In the second place no matter how much the
concept of time is transformed into the general con-
cept existence it does not bring us one step nearer the
goal. For the fundamental forms of all existence are
space and time, and a thing existing outside of time is as
silly an idea as that of a being outside of space. The
Hegelian " past existence in which there was no time "
and the neo-Schelling "being beyond the scope of
thought " are rational conceptions compared with this be-
ing outside of time. For this reason Herr Duehring goes
to work very cautiously " intrinsically it may be called
time, but one cannot really call it time, as time does not
consist in itself of real parts but is merely divided by us
into parts to suit our own convenience," only a rea^ fill-
ing up of time with distinct facts makes it capable of cal-
culation. It is impossible to see the significance of piling
up an empty duration. But it does not matter anyway.
The question is whether the universe in this presupposed
condition continues, that is persists, through a period of
time. We have long known that it is useless to try and
measure such empty space and to calculate without plan
or aim and just because of the tiresomeness of such a

78 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

proceeding Hegel calls this infinity "' miserable." Ac-
cording to Herr Duehring time exists only by virtue
of change, not change in and through time. Because
time is different from change and independent of it, we
can measure it by the changes, because in order to meas-
ure we need something different from that which is to
be measured. And the time in which no recognisible
changes take place is very far from being no time, on
the other hand since it is free from other ingredients, it
is pure, that is to say, true time. Indeed if we want to
contemplate, time as a pure concept separated from all
foreign admixture, we are obliged to eliminate all the
various events which occur in time, either successively or
simultaneously, and thus imagine a time in which noth-
ing occurs. By this means we have not permitted the
concept time to be overcome by the general concept of
existence, but we have thereby arrived at a pure time
concept. All these contradictions and impossibilities are
mere child's play compared with the confusion into which
he plunges the universe with its self-sufficient commence-
ment. If the universe was in a condition in which no
change occurred in it, how did it ever manage to get
from that state to one of change ? Moreover, an abso-
lute condition of absence of change existing from ^eter-
nity cannot possibly get out of that state unaided so as
to pass over to a condition of progress and change. A
first cause of motion must therefore have come from the
outside, from beyond the universe, which caused the
movement. This first cause of motion is clearly only an-
other term for God, The God and the Beyond of which
Herr Duehring fancied that he had so nicely settled in
his scheme of the universe, return sharpened and deep-
ened in his natural philosophy.

Further Herr Duehring says : " Where a fixed ele-

NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 79

ment of existence is capable of measurement, it will re-
main in unalterable stability. This is evident from ma-
terial and mechanical force." The former quotation
gives, it may be incidentally mentioned, a good example
of Herr Duehring's axiomatic grandiloquence. Fixed
quantities remain exactly the same, the quantity of me-
chanical force, once in the universe, is always the same.
We will not dwell'on this, so far as it is true, Descartes
knew and said it three hundred years ago as regards
philosophy, while in mechanical science the doctrine of
the conservation of energy has been preached for the
last twenty years. Herr Duehring has not improved
upon it in so far as he limits it to mechanical energy.
But where was mechanical energy at the period of un-
changeableness ? To this question Herr Duehring stub-
bornly refuses an answer.

Where was the unchangeable mechanical force then,
Herr Duehring, and what was it busy about? Answer:
" The original state of the universe, or, better, the exist-
ence of unchangeable matter, not allowing of any
changes in time, is a question which no mind can pass
except one which sees the acme of wisdom in the de-
struction of its own powers." Therefore you must
either take my original condition with your eyes shut, or
I, the lusty Eugene Duehring, brand you as an intel-
lectual eunuch. Some people might be quite alarmed
about this, but we who have seen a few examples of
Herr Duehring's powers, can let the elegant abuse pass
and reiterate the question, " But how about that me-
chanical energy, Herr Duehring, if you please ? "

Herr Duehring is staggered at once. In fact, he
stammers, " There is no proof of the actual existence of
that original condition. Let us remember that this is
also the case with each new step in the series with which

8o LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

we are acquainted. He therefore who will make diffi-
culties in the foregoing case may see that he does not
avoid them in the smaller apparent cases. Besides, the
possibility exists that there are successively graduated
intermediate states inserted, and thus there is a stable
bridge by the means of which we can work backwards
to the solution of the problem. As a matter of fact
this notion of stability does not assist the main thought,
but it is for us the fundamental form of regular progres-
sion, and of each transition known so far, so that we
have a right to consider it as intermediate between the
first original state and its disturbance. But if we con-
sider the independent condition of equipoise from the
point of view of mathematical concepts as, admittedly,
without independent existence, there is no need of indi-
cating the mode in which matter came into a dynamic
condition." Outside of the mechanics of matter a
change in movement of matter depends upon a change
in the movement of the most insignificant particles.
" Up to the present we have no universal principle of
knowledge and we must therefore not be surprised if
we are somewhat in the dark as to these matters."

That is all that Herr Duehring has to say, and we
should seek the very pinnacle of wisdom not alone in a
mutilation of the creative faculty, but in blind supersti-
tion, if we were to let the matter pass with these foolish
evasions and statements. Absolute stability has no
power of change in itself, Herr Duehring admits this.
The absolute condition of equipoise possesses no means
by which it can pass into a dynamic state. What have
we then? Just three false and foolish phrases.

In the first place, Herr Duehring says that to show
the transition from each most insignificant step in the
chain of things with which we are acquainted to the next

NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 8l

presents the same difficulty. He seems to think that his
readers are infants. The proof of the transitions and
interrelations of the most insignificant links in the chain
of existence is just what constitutes the subject matter of
natural science. If there is an impediment anywhere,
nobody, not even Herr Duehring, thinks to explain the
development as proceeding from nothing, but on the
other hand as only proceeding from transition, change,
and forward movement from a completed evolutionary
stage. Here, however, he undertakes to show with ref-
erence to matter that it proceeds from absence of move-
ment and therefore from nothing.

In the second place, we have the " stable bridge."
This does not help us appreciably over the difficulty, but
we have a right to use it as a bridge between rigid sta-
bility and motion. Unfortunately stability consists in
absence of motion, and the question as to the generation
of motion remains as dark a secret as before. And if
Herr Duehring shifts his no-movement at all to uni-
versal movement in infinitely small particles and ascribes
to this ever so long a duration of time, we are still not
the thousand part of an inch further from the place
whence we started. Without a creative act we can get
nothing from nothing, not even anything as small as a
mathematical differential. The bridge of stability is
therefore not even a pons asinorum. Herr Duehring is
the only person able to cross it.

Thirdly, as long as the present theories of mechanics
prevail, this constitutes one of Herr Duehring's most re-
liable props, we cannot indicate how anything passes
from a state of quiescence to one of motion. But the
mechanical theory of heat teaches us that the movement
of the mass depends upon the movements of the mole-
cules, (so that even in this case movement proceeds from

82 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

Other movement and not from lack of movement) and
this Herr Duehring shyly points out might serve as a
bridge between the entirely static (the state of equipoise)
and the dynamic (self-movement). But here Herr
Duehring leaves us entirely in the dark. All his deepen-
ing and sharpening has dug a pit of folly and we are
brought up necessarily in " darkness." But Herr Dueh-
ring troubles himself very little about that. He says
right on the next page, with considerable audacity that
he has been able to endow the self contained stability
with real significance by means of the properties of
matter and the mechanical forces.

In spite of all these errors and confused statements we
have still an inspiring faith remaining that " The mathe-
matics of the inhabitants of other planets cannot rest
on any axioms other than our own."

Cosmogony, Physics, and Chemistry.

Proceeding we come to theories respecting the mode
by which the world, as it is to-day, came into being. A
universal separation of matter from one element was the
notion of the Ionic philosophers, but, since Kant, the con-
ception of an original nebulous state has played a new
role and according to this gravitation and heat expan-
sion have built up the worlds, little by little and one by
one. The mechanical theory of heat of our time has
fixed the origin of the earlier condition of the universe
with much greater precision.

In spite of all this " the universal condition of the
gaseous form can only be a point of departure for se-
rious conclusions if one can define the mechanical sys-
tem of it more precisely beforehand. If not, the idea
becomes not only very cloudy, but the original nebula
becomes really in the progress of those conclusions

NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 83

denser and more impenetrable." . . . For the pres-
ent everything remains in the vagueness and formless-
ness of an indefinite idea, and so with regard to the
gaseous universe we have only an insubstantial concep-
tion."

The theory of Kant that all existing worlds were cre-
ated from a mass of rotating vapor was the greatest
advance made by astronomy since the days of Copernicus.
The idea that nature had no history in time was then
shaken for the first time. Up to then the worlds were
fixed in bounds and conditions from their very beginning,
and though the individual organisms on the separate
worlds were transient, the species remained unalterable.
Nature was conceived as an apparently limited move-
ment and its motion seemed to be the repetition of the
same movements perpetually. It was in this conception
which is entire accord with the metaphysical mode of
thought that Kant made the first breach and so scientifi-
cally that most of his grounds of proof stand good to-
day. Really the theory of Kant is a mere hypothesis
even to-day. The Copernican theory of the universe
has no longer any weight and since the spectroscope dis-
covered such glowing gaseous matter in space all objec-
tions have been disposed of and scientific opposition to
Kant's theory has been silenced. Even Her'r Duehritig
cannot produce his universe without the nebulous state
and he takes his revenge by asking to be shown the me-
chanical system of this nebulous state and because this
cannot be done he inflicts all sorts of contemptuous re-
marks upon this nebulous state. Unfortunately modern
science cannot show this system and please Herr Dueh-
ring. But there are many other questions which it can-
not answer. For example regarding the question whv
toads have no tails it can onlv answer so far " Because

84 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

they have lost them." But if people get angry and say
that this is all vague and formless, a mere fanciful idea,
incapable of being made definite and a very poor notion,
such views would not carry us a step further, scientifi-
cally. Such insults and exaggerations are sufficiently
numerous. What is there to hinder Herr Duehring him-
self from discovering the mechanical system of the orig-
inal nebular, state ?

Fortunately we are informed that the nebular hypothe-
sis of Kant " is far from showing a fully distinct con-
dition of the world-medium or of explaining how matter
arrived at a similar state." This is really very fortunate
for Kant who is to be congratulated on having been able
to trace the existing celestial bodies to the nebular con-
dition, and who yet does not allow himself to dream of
the self-contained unchanged condition of matter. It is
to be remarked by the way that although the nebular con-
dition of Kant is supposed to be the original vapor-form
of matter, this is to be understood merely relatively.
It is to be understood on the one hand as the original
vapor form of the heavenly bodies, as they are at pres-
ent, and on the other hand as the earliest form of matter
to which we have been able to trace our way backwards.
The fact that matter passed through an endless series of
other forms before arriving at the nebular state is not
excluded from this conception but is on the other hand
rather included in it.

Herr Duehring is at an advantage here, ^hereas
science comes to a halt at the existence of the nebulous
state his quack science carries him back to that " Con-
dition of the development of the world which cannot be
called actually static in the present sense of the word
but most emphatically cannot be called dynamic. The
unity of matter and mechanical force which we call the

NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 85

world is, so to speak, a formula of pure logic, to signify
the self-contained condition of matter as the point of
departure of all enumerable stages of material prog-
ress."

We have obviously not yet got away from the original
self-contained condition of matter. Here it is explained
as consisting of mechanical force and matter, and this
as a formula of pure logic, etc. As soon then as the
unity of matter and mechanical force is at an end evolu-
tion proceeds.

The formula of pure logic is nothing but a lame at-
tempt to make the Hegelian categories " an Sich and
fuer Sich" of use in a philosophy of realism. In "an
Sich " according to Hegel the original unity of a thing
consists ; in " fuer Sich " begins the differentiation and
movement of the concealed elements, the active anti-
thesis. We shall therefore depict the original condition
as one in which there is a unity of matter and mechanical
force and the transition to movement as the separation
and antithesis of these two elements. But we have not
thereby established the proof of the real existence of the
fantastic original condition but only this much that it
exists according to the Hegelian category " an Sich "
and just as fantastically disappears according to the
Hegelian category " fuer Sich."

Matter, says Duehring, implies all that is real, there-
fore there is no mechanical force outside of matter.
Mechanical force is furthermore a condition of matter.
In the original condition where no change occurred mat-
ter and its mechanical force were a unity. Afterwards
when 'the change commenced there was a differentiation
from matter.' Thus we are obliged to be satisfied with
these mystical phrases and with the assurance that
the self contained original state was neither static nor

86 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

dynamic, neither in a state of rest nor of motion. We
are still without information with regard to the where-
abouts of mechanical force at that period and how we
arrived at a condition of motion from one of rest with-
out a push from the outside, that is without God.

Before the time of Herr Duehring materialists- were
wont to speak of matter and motion-. He reduces mo-
,tion to mechanical force as its necessary original form
and so renders incomprehensible the real connection be-
tween matter and motion which was also not evident to
the earlier materialists. Yet the thing is easy enough.
Matter has neverr existed without motion, neither can it.
Motion in space, the mechanical motion of smaller parti-
cles to single worlds, the motion of molecules as in the
case of heat, or as electric or magnetic currents, chem-
ical analysis or synthesis, organic life, each single each
single atom of the matter of the world — they all dis-
cover themselves in one or other of the forms of motion
or in several of them together at any given moment.
All quiescence, all rest, is only significant in relation to
this or that given form of motion. A body for example
may be upon the ground in mechanical quiescence, in
mechanical rest. This does not prevent its participation
in the movements of the earth and of the whole solar
system, just as little does it prevent its smallest component
parts from completing the movements conditioned by
the temperature or its atoms from going through a
chemical process. Matter without motion is just as un-
thinkable as motion without matter. Motion is just as
uncreatable or indestructible as matter itself, the older
philosophy of Descartes proclaimed precisely that the
quantity of motion in the world has been fixed from the
beginning. Motion cannot be generated therefore it can
only be transferred. If motion is transferred from one

NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 87

body to another, one may as far as it is regarded as
transferring itself, as active, consider it as the original
cause of motion, but so far as it is transferred, as passive.
This active motion we call force ; the passive, expression
of force. It is therefore just as clear as noon that force
is just as great as its expression because the same niotion
fulfils itself in both.

A motionless condition of matter is therefore one of
the hollowest and most absurd notions, a mere delirium.
In order to arrive at it one is obliged to cbnsider the
relative absence of motion in the case of a body lying
on the ground, as absolute rest, and then to transfer this
idea to the entire universe. This is made easier by the
reduction of motion in general to mere mechanical force.
By the limitation of motion to mere mechanical force we
can conceive of a force as at rest, as confined, as mo-
mentarily ineffective. If for example in the transference
of motion which transference is very frequently a some-
what complicated process in the carrying out of which
various intermediate steps are necessary, one may stay
the actual transference at a chosen point and stop the
process, as for example if one loads a gun and de-
lays the moment when the charge shall be set at liberty
by the pull of the trigger, through the firing of powder.
Therefore one may conceive of matter as being loaded
with force in the unprogressive static period, and this
Herr Duehring appears to mean by his Unity of matter
and force if indeed he means anything at all. This
notion is absurd, since it pictures as absolute for the
entire universe a condition which is by nature only rela-
tive and to which therefore only a portion of matter can
be subjected at one and the same time. Let us look at
it from this point of view and we do not escape the diffi-
culty of explaining first how the universe came to Lie

88 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

loaded and in the second place, whose finger drew the
trigger. We may revolve all we please but under the
guidance of Herr Duehring we always come back over
and over again to the finger of God.

From astronomy our realist philosopher passes on to,
mechanics and physics and complains that the mechanical
theory of heat has brought us no further in the course
of a generation than the point which Robert Mayer
reached by his own efiforts. Moreover the whole thing
is very obscure. We must " always remember that with
conditions of the movement of matter statical conditions
are also given and that these last are not measured in
mechanical work. If we have ea;-lier typified nature as a
great workwoman, and we still hold to the statement, we
must now add that the static condition, the condition of
rest, does not imply any mechanical labor. We are
again without the bridge from the static to the dynamic
and if latent heat, so called, is up to the present a
stumbling block to the theory we can recognise a lack
which may be denied in the' cosmic process."

This whole oracular utterance is again merely an out-
pouring of bad science which very clearly perceives that
it has got itself into a place from which it cannot be
saved by creating motion from a state of absolute free-
dom from motion, and is ashamed to call upon its only
saviour, the Creator of heaven and earth. If in mechan-
ics, heat included, there is no bridge to be, found from
statics to dynamics, from equipoise to motion, why should
Herr Duehring be obliged to find a bridge 'from his con-
dition of absence of motion to motion? Thus he would
have the luck to escape from his dilemma.

In ordinary mechanics the bridge from statics to dy-
namics is — the push from the outside. If a stone of the
weight of a hundred grammes be lifted ten meters high

NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 89

and then flung free so that it should remain hanging in
a self contained condition and in a state of rest, you
would have to appeal to a public of sucking infants to
declare that the existing condition of that body represents
no mechanical labor and that its removal from its earlier
condition has no measure in mechanical work. Any
passerby would tell Herr Duehring that the stone did not
come on the string by its own efforts and the first good
hand book in 'mechanics would inform him that if he let
the stone fall again, the latter in its fall does just as
much mechanical work as is necessary to lift it to the
height of ten meters. The very simple fact that the
stone is suspended represents mechanical force in itself,
since if it remain long enough, the string breaks, as soon
as it, as a result of its chemical constitution, is no longer
strong enough to hold the stone. All mechanical phe-
nomena, may, we must inform Herr Duehring, be re-
duced to just such simple fundamental forms, and the
engineer is still unborn who cannot discover the bridge
from statics to dynamics as long as he has sufficient
initial force at his disposal.

It is quite a hard nut and bitter pill for our metaphy-
sician that motion should find its measure in its opposite
rest. It is such a glaring contradiction, and every con-
tradiction is an absurdity in the eyes of Herr Duehring.
It is nevertheless true that the hanging stone by reason
of its weight and its distance from the ground represents
a means of mechanical movement sufficiently easily meas-
ured in different ways, as for example through gravity
direct, through glancing on an incline or through the
undulation of a wave — and it is just the same with a
loaded gun. The expression of motion in terms of its
opposite rest presents no difficulty at all to the dialectic
philosophy. The whole contradiction in its eyes is

go LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

merely relative, for absolute rest, complete equipose does
not exist. The movement of the particles strives towards
equipose, the movement of the mass in turn destroys the
equipose, so that rest and equipose wher,e they occur are
the results of arrested motion, and it is evident that this
motion is capable of being measured in respect of its
results, of being expressed in itself and of being restored
in some form or other external to itself. But Herr
Duehring would never be satisfied with such a simple
explanation of the matter. Like a ,good metaphysician
he creates a yawning gulf between motion and equipose
which does not really exist and then wonders if he can
find no bridge across the self-created chasm. He might
just as well bestride his metaphysical Rosinante and hunt
the " Ding an Sich " of Kant since it is in the last analy-
sis nothing else than this which stands behind the undis-
coverable bridge.

But what about the mechanical theory of heat and of
latent heat which is a " stumbling block " in the path Of
the theory ?

If one convert a pound of ^ ice at freezing point under
normal atmospheric pressure into a pound of water^ of
the same temperature by means of heat there vanishes
a quantity of heat which could heat the same pound of
water from o" centigrade to 79° centigrade, or seventy-
nine pounds of water one degree centigrade. If one heat
this pound of water to boiling point, that is, to one hun-
dred degrees centigrade and change it into steam of the
heat of one hundred degrees centigrade there vanishes
up to the time when the last of the water is changed into
steam a seven fold greater quantity of heat, capable of
raising the temperature of 537.2 pounds of water one de-
gree. This dissipated heat is called latent. It is trans-
formed, by cooling the steam, into water again, and the

NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 9I

water into ice, so the same mass of heat which was for-
merly latent, is again set free, that is, as heat capable of
being felt and measured. This setting free of heat by
the condensation of steam and the freezing of water is the
reason that steam if it is cooled off at ioo° trans-
forms itself little by little into water, and that a mass
of water at freezing point is but slowly transformed into
ice. These are the facts. The question is what becomes
of the heat while it is latent?

The mechanical theory of heat according to which the
heat of a body at a certain temperature is dependent upon
the greater or less vibration of the smallest physical
parts (molecules) a vibration which can, under certain
conditions, be transformed into some other form of mo-
tion, shows the whole thing completely, that the latent
heat has performed work, has been expended in work. ■
By the melting of the ice the close connection of the
separate particles is broken asunder and changed into a
loose relationship ; by the conversion of water into steam
at boiling point a condition is entered where the separate
molecules exercise no noticeable influence upon each
other, and under the influence of heat fly from one
another in all directions. It is now evident that the sepa-
rate molecules of a body in the gaseous state are endowed
with much greater energy than in the fluid state, and
in the fluid state thanl in the solid. Latent heat is there-
fore not dissipated, it is merely transformed and has
taken on the form of molecular elasticity.

As soon as conditions are at an end under which the
molecules can exercise this relative freedom with regard
to each other as soon namely as the temperature falls
below one hundred degrees to zero, this elasticity be-
comes released and the molecules come together with the
same force with which they formerly flew apart, but

92 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

only to appear again as heat, as exactly the same quan-
tity of heat as was latent before. This explanation is
of course a hypothesis, as is the whole mechanical theory
of heat, in so far as no one has yet seen a molecule,
much less a molecule in motion. Like all recent theories,
this hypothesis is full of flaws but it can at least offer
an explanation which does not conflict with the uncreat-
ability and indestructibility of motion and it is able to
give an account of the whereabouts of the heat in the
transformation. Latent heat is therefore by no means
an obstacle in the way of the mechanical theory of heat.
On the contrary this theory for the first time provides a
rational explanation of the subject and an obstacle arises
from the fact in particular that the physicists make use
of the old and ineffective expression " latent heat " to
signify the heat 1;ransformed into some other shape by
molecular energy.

The static conditions of the solid, liquid and gaseous
states therefore represent mechanical work in so far as
mechanical work is a measure of heat. Thus, the solidT
crust of the earth, like the water of the ocean, repre-
sents in its present form a certain quantity of heat set
free which implies the same quantity of mechanical force.
By the passing of the vaporous state which was the
original form of the earth into the fluid state and later
into a condition, for the most part solid, a certain quan-
tity of molecular energy was set free in space, the dif-
ficulty of which Herr Duehring whispers does not there-
fore exist. We are frequently brought to a stop in our
cosmic observations by lack of knowledge, but nowhere
by insuperable theoretical difficulties. The bridge .from
statics to dynamics is therefore the push from the out-
side caused by the cooling or heating occasioned by
other bodies which influence certain objects in equipoise.

NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 93

The further we explore Herr Duehring's philosophy, the
more impossible appear all his attempts to explain rota-
tion from absence of rotation, or to discover the bridge
by which that which is purely static, self-contained, can
without disturbance come to be the dynamic, in motion.

We should here be glad to get rid of the whole self-
contained condition business. Herr Duehring, however,
goes to chemistry and gives us three permanent natural
laws established by the philosophy of realism as follows,
I. The constant amount of matter in the universe. 2.
The simple chemical elements, and 3. The mechanical
forces are unchangeable.

Therefore the impossibility of creating or destroying
matter, the simple forms of its existence as far as they
exist, and motion, these old, well known facts, inade-
quately expressed, that is 'the only positive thing which
Herr Duehring is in a position to offer us as a result of
his real philosophy of the inorganic world. All these
things we have long known. But what we have not
known is that they are permanent laws and as such nat-
ural properties of the system of things. It is just the
same thing over again as in the case of Kant. Herr
Duehring takes some universally known expressions,
pastes the Duehring label on them and calls them " funda-
mentally original results and views, system shaping
thoughts, profound science."

We have not long to hesitate on this account. What-
ever deficiencies the most profound science and the best
contrived social theories may have, for once Herr Dueh-
ring can say precisely " The quantity of gold in the uni-
verse must always remain the same and cannot be in-
creased or diminished any more than matter in general.
But unfortunately Herr Duehring does not tell us what
we may buy with this gold."

94 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

The Organic World

" From mechanics in rest and motion to the relation of
sensation and thought there is a uniform progression of
interruptions." With this assurance Herr Duehring
spares himself from saying anything further about the
origin of life, though one might reasonably expect that
a thinker who has followed the development of the world
from its self-contained condition, and who is so much
at home with the other heavenly bodies would be here at
home also. Besides this assurance is only half trtie in
so far as it is not yet completed by means of the log line
of Hegel, of which mention has been made already. In
all its gradations the transition from one form of evolu-
tion to another remains a leap, a differentiating move-
ment. So in the transition from the mechanics of the
worlds to those of the smaller amounts of matter in
each single world, just so also in that from the mechanics
of the mass to that of the molecule — the motion which
we examine particularly in physics, so-called, heat, light,
electricity, magnetism, just in the same way also the
transition from the physics of the molecule to the physics
of the phemical atom is completed by a differentiating
leap, and it is just the same with the transition from
ordinary chemical action to the chemistry of albumen
which we call life. Within the sphere of life the changes
become less frequent and less remarkable. Therefore
Hegel must again correct Herr Duehring.

The idea of purpose furnishes Herr Duehring with his
conception of the transition to the organic world. This is
again borrowed from Hegel, who in his " logic " — teach-
ings of the concept — mingled with teachings of teleology
or of purpose, passes over from chemistry to life.
Whichever way we look we discover Herr Duehring to

NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 95

be in possession of Hegelian lore which he gives forth
without any embarrassment as his own fundamental
philosophy. It would be too long a task to find out here
just how far the application of the ideas of purpose is
correctly stated and applied to the organic world. The
application of the Hegelian " inner purpose " at all events
is evident, that is, of a purpose which is imported into
nature not through a consciously acting third party, like
the wisdom of Providence, but which is inherent in mat-
ter itself, which among people who are not well versed
in philosophy proceeds to the unthinking supposition of a
conscious and all-wise agent; the same Herr Duehring
who breaks out into unmeasured moral indignation at the
least tendency towards spiritism on the part of other peo-
ple, tells us that " sex sensations are certainly mainly
directed towards the gratification which is bound up in
their exercise." He tells us moreover that " poor Na-
ture must always hold the objective world in order "
and it has besides to perform acts which require more
shbtlety from Nature than we usually attribute to her.
But nature knows not only why she does this and that.
She has not only her housemaid's duties to perform, she
has not only subtlety, which is a very pretty accomplish-
ment, in subjective conscious thought, she has also a will,
for " we must regard the additional natural desires which
occur, such as. feeding and propagation, not as directly
but as indirectly willed." We now arrive at a consciously
thinking and acting nature, and we therefore stand right
,at the bridge, not indeed between the static and dynamic
but between pantheism and deism, or perhaps Herr
Duehring is pleased to indulge himself in a little " nat-
ural-philosophical half-poetry."

Impossible. All that the realistic philosophy has to
say on organic nature is limited to a war against this

96 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

natural philosophical half-poesy against " Charlatanism
with its wanton superficialities and pseudo-scientific mys-
ticism, against the poetic features of Darwinism."

Darwin comes in for a share of blame chiefly because
he transferred the Malthusian theory of population from
political economy to natural science, because he is en-
tangled by his notions of breeding, so that his work is a
sort of unscientific half-poetic attack against design in
creation, and that the whole of Darwinism, after what
he has borrowed from Lamark has been deducted, is a
piece of brutality aimed against humanity.

Darwin had brought home with him as the result of
his scientific journeys the conclusion that species of plants
and animals are not fixed but are subject to variations.
In order to pursue this idea he entered upon experi-
ments in the breeding of plants and animals. Just for
this reason England has become a classic land. The
scientists of other countries, Germany, for example, have
nothing to offer comparable with England in this respecit.
Moreover, most of the conclusions belong to the last
century so that the establishment of the facts presented
few difficulties. Darwin found that this artificial breed-
ing produced differences in the species of plants and
animals greater than occur among those which are uni-
versally recognised as belonging to different species.
Therefore it was, up to a certain point, proved that spe-
cies can change and furthermore there was established
the possibility of a common ancestry for organisms
which partake of the characteristics of different species.

Darwin now examined the question whether there were
not in nature causes — which without the conscious in-
tention of the breeder — might in the course of time, bv
means of heredity, produce changes in the living animal
analogous to those produced by scientific breeding.

NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 97

These causes he found in the disproportion between the
enormous number of germs made by nature and the small
number of beings which actually come to maturity. But
as the germ struggles for its own development there is
of necessity a consequent struggle for existence, which
not only shows itself directly in the wear and tear of the
body, but also as a struggle for space and light, as in
the case of plants. And it is evident that in
this fight those individuals have the best prospect of
coming to maturity and reproducing themselves which
possess certain qualities, perhaps insignificant, but ad-
vantageous in their fight for existence. There is a
tendency towards the inheritance of these individual
properties, and if they occur in several individuals of the
same species towards development in the direction once
taken, by virtue of the accumulated heredity, while the
individuals which are not possessed of these qualities
succumb more easily and little by little disappear in the
struggle for existence. . Thus a species naturally changes
by the survival of the fittest.

Against this theory of Darwin Herr Duehring urges
that the origin of the idea of the struggle for existence
is, as Darwin himself confessed, based on the views of
the political economist and theorist, Malthus, on the
population question, and he covers it with all the abuse
appropriate to the clerical Malthusian views on keeping
down the population. Now it happens, that Darwin
never said that the cause of the struggle for existence
theory was to be sought from Malthus. He only said
that his theories respecting the struggle for existence are
the theories of Malthus applied to the entire vegetable
and animal world. How great a blunder, Darwin made
when he sa naively accepted the teachings of Malthus
without examination may be seen from the fact that there

98 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

is no need to employ the spectacles of Malthus in order
to detect the struggle for existence in nature, — the con-
tradiction between the innumerable mass of germs which
nature produces in such prodigality and the slight num-
ber which can manage to reach maturity, a contradiction
which resolves itself into an apparently grim fight for
existence. And with regard to the law of wages the
Malthusian doctrines are widely advertised and Ricardo
based his contentions upon them, — so the struggle for
existence in nature may find a standing even without the
Malthusian interpretation. Besides the organisms of
nature have their law of population, the establishment
of which would decide the theories of the development
of species. And who gave the decisive impetus in that
direction? Nobody but Darwin.

Herr Duehring is on his guard against entering upon
the positive side of this question. Instead he must again
find fault with the Struggle for existence. There can
be no argument about a struggle for existence between
plants and the genial eaters of plants " in a sufficiently
accurate sense the struggle for existence only occurs
within the sphere of brutality, in so far as nourishment
depends upon robbery and consumption." And after he
has reduced the concept struggle for existence to these
narrow limits he gives his wrath free play as regards
the brutality of this conception which he himself has
narrowed down to a brutal conception. But this moral
wrath simply reacts on Herr Duehring himself, the in-
ventor of this sort of struggle for existence. It is not
Darwin therefore who seeks among the lower animals
the " conditions of the operations of nature " (as a mat-
ter of fact Darwin would have included the whole of
organic nature in the struggle), but one of Herr Duehr-
ing's bugaboos. The expression " struggle for exist-

NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 99

ence " in particular excites Herr Duehring's lofty moral
scorn. That this actually exists among plants every
meadow, every cornfield and every wood can show him.
We need not trouble about the name, whether one call it
" struggle for existence " or " lack of the conditions of
existence and want of mechanical realisation," but as to
how this fact operates as regards the maintenance or
transformation of species.. With regard to this Herr
Duehring persists in a characteristically stubborn silence.
We cannot trouble ourselves any more about natural se-
lection.

But " Darwinism produces its changes and differentia-
tions out of nothing." Darwin thoroughly understands
that he is engaged with the causes which have produced
changes in individuals and in the second place he is en-
gaged with the mode in which such individual differen-
tiations tend to mark off a race, a genus, or a species.
Darwin moreover was less occupied in discovering- these
causes, which up to the present are either entirely un-
known or on which there is only general information,
than in discovering a rational form in which to establish
their reality, to embrace their permanent significance.
But Darwin ascribed too wide a reach to his discovery
in this that he made it an exclusive means of variation
in species and neglected the causes of individual dif-
ferentiations from the general form. This mistake how-
ever is common to most people whp make a step for-
wards. Next, if Darwin produces his changes in in-
dividual types out of nothing and thereby excludes the
wisdom of the breeder, the breeder on his part must not
only display his wisdom but he must produce out of
nothing real changes in plant and animal forms. But
who has given the impetus to the investigation as to

lOO LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

whence these variations and differentiations proceed?
It is again no one but Darwin.

Lately the conception of natural selection has been
broadened, by Haeckel, in. particular, and the variation
of species has been shown to be the result of actual
change owing to adaptation and inheritance, whereby
adaptation is considered as the source of variations and
heredity as the conserving element in the process. Even
this is not correct in Herr Duehring's eyes. " Peculiar
adaptation to the circumstances of life as they are of-
fered or withheld by nature supposes impulses and facts
which answer to the conception. Hence adaptation is
only apparent and actual causality does not elevate it-
self above the lowest steps of physical, chemical and
plant physiology." - It is again the name which provokes
Herr Duehring. But how does he deal with the matter ?
The question is if such changes do take place in the
species of organic beings or not. And again Herr Dueh-
ring has no reply.

" If a plant in the course of its growth takes a direc-
tion by which it gets the most light the result is nothing
but a combination of physical forces and chemical agents,
and if we are to call it an adaptation, not metaphorically
but strictly, confusion is certain to arise in the motion."
This man is so exacting with other people because he is
quite well acquainted with the intentions of nature and
speaks of the subtlety of nature, even of its will. There
is confusion, indeed, but with whom, with Haeckel or
with Herr Duehring?

And the confusion is not only spiritual but logical.
We have seen that Herr Duehring put forth all his ef-
forts to make the purpose idea in nature real. " The
relation of means and end does not by any means show
a conscious intention." But what is adaptation without

NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 101

conscious intention, without any intrusion of design of
which he complains so loudly, but an unconscious tele-
ology ?

If the color of tree frogs and leaf eating insects is
as a rule green and that of beasts that inhabit the desert
sandy-yellow, and that of polar animals white, they have
certainly not come into possession of this coloring in-
tentionally or through any kind of mental process, on
the contrary the coloring can only be explained by
means of the operation of physical substances and chem-
ical agents. And yet it cannot be denied that by these
colors these animals are particularly adapted to the con-
ditions in which they are and it is certain that they are
by their means rendered less visible to their enemies.
Just of a similar nature are the organs by which certain
plants seize and consume certain insects (the means be-
ing on their under side, suited to this purpose and
adapted to this end). Now if Herr Duehring insists
that the adaptation must be realised through the opera-
tion of thought, he only says that the purpose must be
carried out through mental operation, must be conscious
and intentional. Thus again, just as in the philosophy
of realism we arrive at the Creator with a purpose, at
God. Formerly this kind of declaration was called
'' deism " and Herr Duehring says that we had not much
regard for it, but it now appears that- the world has
gone backwards in this respect also.

From adaptation we come to heredity and here ac-
cording to Herr Duehring Darwinism is quite out. The
whole organic world, Darwin explained, came from a
single germ, is^ so to speak, the brood of a single be-
ing. Independent similar, products of nature accord-
ing to Darwin do not exist without heredity and his
retrogressive philosophy must come to a full stop when

I02 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

the end of the thread of ancestry is reached, or the orig-
inal vegetable form."

The statement that Darwin traced all existing organ-
isms from one original germ is to put it politely a piece
of pure imagination on the part of Herr Duehring.
Darwin says distinctly on the last page of the Origin
of Species, Sixth Edition, that he regards all living be-
ings not as separate creations but as the descendants in
a direct line from some fewer beings and Haeckel makes
a distinct advance on this ascribes " an entirely dis-
tinct source for plants and another for the animal king-
dom " and on and between both of them " a number of
original stems each of which has developed independ-
ently from one single primary monistic form." (His-
tory of Creation page 397.) This original form of life
Herr Duehring discovers solely to bring it into contempt
by paralleling it with the first man according to Jewish
tradition, Adam. Here, unfortunately for Herr Dueh-
ring, he does not know how this original Jew turns out,
according to Smith's Assyrian discoveries to have been
the original Semite, and that the entire Biblical story of
the Creation and the Flood has been shown to have been
taken from a legendary store common to the Jews, Baby-
lonians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians.

It is brought forward as a severe and irrefutable re-
proach to Darwin that he is at an end where the thread
of descent fails him. Unfortunately the whole, of our
science deserves the same reproach. When the thread
of descent fails it it is " at an end." ^It has not yet come
to the point of creating organic beings without an an-
cestry, not even once has it been able to make simple
protoplasm or other albuminous bodily forms out of the
chemical elements. It can only say therefore with any
any certainty regarding the origin of life, that it must

NATURAL PHILOSOPHY IO3

have come about by a chemical process. But perhat)s
the philosophy of realism can give us some assistance
here since it is engaged with independent organic natural
products, without any descent one from another. How
can these come into being? By original creation? But
up to the present not even the most audacious advocates
of spontaneous generation have claimed to create in this
way anything except bacteria, fungi, or other very ele-
mentary organisms, but not insects, birds, fish or mam-
mals. If these homogeneous products of nature — it
is understood for all this discussion that they are or-
ganic — are not related through descent, they or their
ancestors, then " where the thread of descent breaks "
they must have been placed in the world by a separate act
of creation, and this again requires a creator, what we
call " deism."

Herr Duehring further explains that it was a piece
of superficiality on the part of Darwin to make the mere
fact of the sex-composition of qualities the foundation
for the existence of these qualities." Here we have
again a piece of pure imagination on the part of our
profound philosopher. On the contrary Darwin says
that natural selection has to do ohly with the maintenance
of variations and not with their origin. This new sup-
position however of things which Darwin did not say
serves to assist us to this deep idea of Duehring. " If a
principle of individual variation had been sought in the
inner scheme of creation it would have been an en-
tirely rational idea. For it is natural to unite the idea
of universal generation with that of sex propagation,
and to regard the so-called original creation from the
higher point of view, not as absolutely antagonistic to
reproduction but even as reproduction itself." And the

104 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

man who could write this is not ashamed to reproach
Hegel with writing jargon.

Let us call a halt to the vexatious and contradictory
babble with which Herr Duehring proclaims his wrath
against the advance given to science by the theory of
Darwin. Neither Darwin nor his followers among the
natural scientists have any idea of belittling Lamark's
tremendous services, in fact they are the very people
who first restored his fame. But we are unable to ig-
nore the fact that in the time of Lamark science was still
far from supplied with competent material to enable it
to answer the question of the origin of species other
than in a prophetic or, as it were anticipatory, manner.
In addition to the enormous amount of material in the
realm of general, as well as of that of anatomical, botany
and zoology, accumulated since that time, two entirely
new sciences have since come into existence — the in-
vestigation of the development of plant and animal
germs (embryology), and the investigation of the or-
ganic survivals in the earth's crust which still remain.
There is a distinct similarity between the steps in the.
development of the organic germ to mature organism,
and the successive steps by which plants and animals
succeed each other in the history of the world. It is
just this similarity which has placed the evolution theory
on its most secure foundations. The theory of evolution
is however still very young and it is beyond question
that upon further investigation the rigid Darwinian ideas
upon the origin of species will be considerably modified.

But what has the realist philosophy of a positive nature
to contribute with respect to the evolution of organic
life ? " The variation of species is an acceptable suppo-
sition, but there exists, in addition, the independent order
of the products of nature belonging to the same species,

NATURAL PHILOSOPHY I05

without any intervention of descent." According to this
we are to conclude that products of unlike species, that
is species which vary, are descended from one another,
but those of similar species not. But even this is not
altogether correct, for he ventures to say of tlie varying
species, " The part played by descent is on the contrary
a very secondary activity of nature." There is hered-
ity, then, but it is only to be reckoned as a factor of
the second class. Let us be glad that heredity of which
Herr Duehring has said so much that is evil and mys-
terious is at least let in by the back door. It is just the
same with natural selection, since after all his moral in-
dignation with respect to the struggle for existence by
means of which natural selection fulfils itself he sud-
denly exclaims, " The most important constituent is to
be found in the conditions of life and cosmic conditions,
while natural selection as set forth by Darwin may be
considered as secondary." Natural selection still exists,
even if a factor of the second class, like the struggle for
existence, and the clerical malthusian surplus-population
, theory. That is all, for the rest Herr Duehring refers
us to Lamark.

Finally, he warns against misuse of the terms meta-
morphosis and evolution. Metamorphosis, he says, is a
very obscure notion, and the concept of evolution is only
admissible in so far as a law of evolution can be really
proved. Instead of either of these expressions we should
employ the term " composition " and then everything
would be all right. It is the same old story over again,
Herr Duehring is satisfied if we change the names. If
we speak of the evolution of the chicken in the egg we
give rise to confusion because we have only an incom-
plete knowledge of the law of evolution. But if we
speak of its " composition " everything becomes clear.

Io6 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

Wc must therefore say no longer " this child is grow-
ing nicely " but, " he composes himself splendidly," and
we congratulate Herr Duehring upon the fact that he is
not only a peer of the author of the Niebelungen Ring
in his opinion of himself but in his own particular capa-
city is also a composer of the future.

Organic World (Conclusion)

" One reflects upon our natural philosophical portion
of positive knowledge in order to fix it relatively to all
one's scientific hypotheses. Next in importance come all
the actual acquisitions of mathematics as well as the
leading principles of exact science in mechanics, physics
and chemistry and particularly the scientific results in
physiology, zoology, and antiquarian investigation."

Herr Duehring speaks in this confident and decided
fashion with respect to the mathematical and scientific
scholarship of Herr Duehring. One cannot detect in
its meager shape and in its scanty and audacious results
the extent of positive knowledge which lies behind.
Every time the oracle is consulted for a definite state-
ment as regards physics or chemistry we get nothing as
regards physics but the equation which expresses the
mechanical equivalent of heat, and concerning chemistry
only this that all bodies are divisible into elements and
combinations of elements. He who can speak as Dueh-
ring does about " gravitating atoms " shows at once that
he is quite at a loss to understand the difference between
an atom and a molecule. Atoms, of course, exist, not
with respect to gravitation or any other physical or me-
chanical form of motion, but only as concerns chemical
action. And if the last chapter on organic nature is
read, the empty, self-contradictory, assertive, oracular,
stupid, circuitous absolute nothingness of the final result

107

I08 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

lead one to the conclusion that Herr Duehring talks about
things of which he knows very little and this conclusion
becomes a certainty when we come to his proposal in the
course of his writing on organic life (biology) to use the
term " composition " instead of evolution. He who can
make such a suggestion as that gives evidence that he
is not acquainted with the building up of organic bodies.
All organic bodies, the very lowest excepted, devebp
from small cells by the increment of visible pieces of
albumen with a central cell. The cell generally develops
an outer skin and the contents are more or less fluid.
The lowest cell-bodies develop from one cell; the enor-
mous majority of organic beings are many-celled and
among -the lower forms these take on similar, and among
the higher forms greater variations of, groupings and
activities.' In the human body for example are bones,
muscles, nerves, sinews, ligaments, cartilage, skin, all
either made up of cells or originating in them. But for
all organic bodies, from the amoeba which is a simple
and for the most part unprotected piece of albumen with
a cell centre in the midst to man, and from the smallest
one-celled desmidian to the highest developed plant, the
mode is one and the same by which the cells propagate
themselves, that is by division. The cell centre is first
laced across its midst, the lacing which separates the
centre into two knobs becomes stronger and stronger
and at last they become separated and two cell centres
are formed. The same occurrence takes place in the cell
itself. Each of the cell centres becomes the middle point
of a collection of cell stufif which by knitting ever closer
becomes combined with the other,' and finally both of
them part and live on as separate cells. Through such
repeated cell divisions the full sized animal gradually de-
velops from the germ of the animal egg after fructifi-

NATURAL PHILOSOPHY ICQ

cation and the substitution of used up cells in the full
grown animal is brought about similarly. To call such
a process " composition " and to speak of the term
" evolution " as a purely imaginary term belongs to one
who does not know anything of the matter, hard as it is
to imagine such ignorance at this date.

We have still somewhat to say with respect to Herr
Duehring's views of life in general. Elsewhere he sets
forth the following statement with respect to life.
" Even the inorganic world is a self-regulated system
but one may undertake to speak of life in the proper
sense first when the organs and the circulation of matter
through special separate channels from a central point
to another germ collection of a minor formation begin."

If life begins where the separate organs begin then
we must hold all Haeckel's protozoa (Protistenreich)
and probably many others as dead ; all organisms at least
up to those composed of one cell and those included are
not capable of life. If the means of circulation of mat-
ter through dififerent channels is the distinguishing mark
of life we must place outside of this definition all the
upper classes of the colenterata entirely, with the ex-
ception of the medusae, and therefore all the polypi and
other plant animals are also to be considered as being
outside the class of living creatures. And if the cir-
culation of matter through different canals from an in-
ner point is the distinguishing characteristic of life we
must reckon all animals as dead which either have no
heart or several hearts. Besides these there belong also
to this category all worms, starfish and ringed creatures
(annuloids and annulous according to Huxley's defi-
nition) a portion of the shell fish, crabs, and finally a
vertebrate animal, the lancelet (amphioxus) and all
plants.

no LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

When Herr Duehring therefore undertakes to dis-
tinguish life narrowly and strictly, he gives four mutually
contradictory modes of distinguishing life, one of which
condemns not only the whole of plant life but about half
the animal kingdom to eternal death. No one can ac-
cuse him of having deceived us when he promised us
peculiar results based on individual ideas.

In another place he says " There is a simple funda-
mental type irtv nature belonging to all organisms from
the lowest to the highest " and this type is to be met " in
the subordinate movements of the most undeveloped
plants. " This is again an absolutely false statement.
The simplest type in the whole of organic nature is the
cell, and it lies universally at the foundation of the
highest organisms. On the other hand there is a sub-
stance among the lowest organisms lower even than the
cell, the protomoeba, a single piece of undifferentiated
protoplasm, without any differentiation, a complete series
of monads and the entire class of siphoneae. All of
these are connected with the higher organisms only by
virtue of the fact that protoplasm is its substantial foun-
dation, and that they fulfill the functions of protoplasm,
that is they live and die.

Further Herr Duehring tells us " physiologically the
concept of existence consists in this, that it embraces a
single nerve apparatus. Sensation is therefore the char-
acteristic of all animal organisms that is the capacity of
conscious subjective recognition of circumstances. The
sharp line of differentiation between plants and animals
consists in the leap to sensation. This distinguishing line
cannot any more be abolished by known forms of tran-
sition than it can be brought into existence by the logical
necessity of externally distinguishable characteristics."

NATURAL PHILOSOPHY III

And further " Plants are totally and eternally without
sensation and are devoid of the faculty for it."

In the first place Hegel says that " sensation is the
specific differentiation, the distinguishing mark of the
animal." Thus one of Hegel's erudite statements be-
comes an indubitable truth of the last instance merely
by being copied into Herr Duehring's book.

In the second place we now arrive for the first time
at the forms of transition between animals and plants.
That these intermediate forms exist, that there are or-
ganisms concerning which we are unable to say "flatly
whether they are plants or animals, that we are therefore
unable to fix accurately the frontiers between plant and
animal life, all these things make Herr Duehring logically
anxious to fix a decisively distinguishing line, which in
the next breath he declares cannot be thoroughly relied
on. But there is no need for us to go to the doubtful
region; intermediate between plants and animals are
sensitive plants which at the least contact fold their
leaves or close their petals. Are insect eating plants ut-
terly without sensation? Even Herr Duehring cannot
make such an assertion without indulging in " unscien-
tific half-poetry."

In the third place Herr Duehring is again giving free
rein to his imagination when he says that sensation is
psychologically existent, even when the nerve apparatus
is exceedingly simple. This is found regularly among
reptiles yet Herr Duehring is the first to say that they
have no sensation because they have no nerves. Sen-
sation is not necessarily bound up with nerves but it
is bound up with some albuminous substance the true na-
ture of which has not yet been discovered.

In addition, the biological knowledge of Herr Dueh-
ring becomes exceedingly evident in that he is not

112 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

ashamed to fling at Darwin the question do animals de-
velop from plants? so that it is a question whether he
is more ignorant with regard to plants or animals.

Of life in general Herr Duehring can only tell us
" The change in the form of matter which fulfills itself
by plastic constructive arrangement remains a distinguish-
ing characteristic of the individual life-process.'"

That is all that we learn of life and with respect to
the plastic creative arrangemeiit we sink knee deep in the
nonsense of Duehring's jargon. If we want to learn
what lif^ is we shall have to look at the problem a little
more closely on our own account.

That organic change in matter is the most universal
and distinctive evidence of life has been declared by
physiological chemists and chemical physiologists times
without number during the last thirty years and. their
utterances are translated by Herr Duehring into his own
clear and elegant language. But to define life as an or-
ganic change of matter is simply to define life as life, for
organic change of matter, or change of matter with
plastic creative arrangement is a statement which must
itself be explained by life, and the explanation in its
turn by the difference between organic and inorganic,
that is between that which is alive and that which is not
alive. So that with this explanation we do not get at
the problem.

Organic change, as such, is frequently found where
life does not exist. There are whole series of processes
in chemistry, which by the proper combination of the
elements, produce again their own conditions, so that
thereby a certain body is the creator of a process. Thus
in the manufacture of sulphuric acid by the burning
of. sulphur, there is created in this process sulphuric
dioxide SOj, and if one add steam and nitric acid there-

NATURAL PHILOSOPHY II3

to, the sulphuric dioxide takes up the water and the oxy-
gen and becomes Hj SOi. Nitric acid gives off oxy-
gen and becomes nitric oxide, this nitric oxide simul-
taneously takes tip new oxygen from the atmosphere and
is transformed into a higher oxide of nitrogen and from
this acid sulphuric dioxide is again given off and made
by the same process, so that, theoretically, an infinitely
small amount of nitric acid should be effective to trans-
form an unlimited quantity of sulphuric dioxide, oxygen
and water into sulphuric acid. Change in matter regu-
larly occurs through the passing of fluids through dead
organic and inorganic membranes as in the artificial cells
of Traube. It therefore appears that there is no prog-
ress by the way of organic change for the quality of
organic change which was to explain life must itself be
explained by life. We must therefore seek it elsewhere.

Life is a mode of existence of protoplasm and con-
sists essentially in the constant renewal of the chemical
constituents of this substance. Protoplasm is here un-
derstood in the modern chemical sense and comprises
under this name all substances analogous to the white
of an egg, otherwise called proteiri substances. The
name is not satisfactory, for the ordinary White of egg
plays the least active role of all transformed substances,
sirv:e,.it only serves as mere nourishment for the yolk, for
the self-developing germ. As long however as so little
is known of the chemical constituents of protoplasm the
name is better tl?an any other because more inclusive.

Whenever we discqver life we also find it bound up
with protoplasm, and when we find a piece of protoplasm
not in solution there we find also life, without exception.
Doubtless the presence of other chemical constituents is
necessary to a living body, to produce the various dif-
ferentiations of these elements of life. They are nc/'

114 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

necessary to life in itself, hence they enter as food and
become transformed into protoplasm. The lowest forms
of life with which we are acquainted are nothing but
simple pieces of protoplasm and yet they have all the
appearance of living objects.

But in what consist these signs of life which are com-
mon to all living objects? In this, that the protoplasm
takes from its surroundings other matter suitable to itself
and assimilates it while other former portions of the body
become decomposed and are thrown off. Other things,
not living bodies, decompose or make combinations, but
cease thereby to be what they were. The rock worn by
atmospheric action is no longer rock, the metal which
becomes oxidised goes oflf in rust. But what causes the
destruction of dead bodies is the essential of the exist-
ence of living protoplasm. From the very moment
when the unbroken interchange in the constituents of
protoplasm ceases, the continual interchange of receiv-
ing and throwing off, from that moment the protoplas-
mic substance itself ceases, becomes decomposed, that is,
dies.

Life, the mode of existence of protoplasmic substance,
therefore consists in this, that at one and the same mo-
ment it is itself and something else, and this is not the
result of a process to which it is compelled by external
agency, since this may happen also with objects which
are dead. On the contrary life, which is change of mat-
ter, is consequent upon nourishment and throwing off,
is a self-fulfilling process inherent in its medium, pro-
toplasm, without which it cannot exist. Hence, it fol-
lows that if chemistry should ever discover how to make
protoplasm artificially, this protoplasm must show some
signs of life, even if very insignificant. It is, of course,

NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 115

doubtful if chemistry will discover the proper food for
this protoplasm at the same time as the protoplasm.

Through the changes in matter produced by nourish-
ment and throwing off, as actual functions of the pro-
toplasm, and through its own plasticity, proceed all the
other most simple factors of life, sensibihty which con-
sists in the interchange between the protoplasm and its
food, contractibility which shows itself at a very low
stage in the consumption of food, possibility of growth
which is shown in the lowest stages of development by
splitting, and internal motion Vvfithout which neither the
consumption nor assimilation of food is possible.

Our definition of life is, of course, very incomplete
since in order to include all the widely differing mani-
festations of life it must confine itself to the most uni-
versal and simple. Definitions are of little scientific
worth. In order to determine what life is we must ex-
amine all forms of its manifestation from the lowest to
the highest. For ordinary use such definitions are very
convenient and in a certain sense indispensable, and they
can do no harrr? as long as their inevitable deficiencies
are not forgotten.

(The remainder pf this section simply teases Herr
Duehring.)

CHAPTER VI

MORALS AND LAW

Eternal Truths

We refrain from offering examples of the hodge
podge of stupidity and sham solemnity with which Herr
Duehring regales his readers for fifty full pages as
fundamental knowledge on the elements of conscious-
ness. We merely quote the following: "He who
merely conceives of thought through the medium of
speech has never understood what is signified by ab-
stract and true thought." Hence, animals are the most
abstract and true thinkers, for their thought is never
obscured by the importunate interference of speech.
With regard to Herr Duehring's thought in particular, it*
may be perceived that they are but little suited to speech
and that the German language in particular is quite in-
adequate to express them.

The fourth part of his book, however, possesses some
redeeming features, for here and there it offers us some
comprehensible notions on the subject' of morals and law
in spite of the tedious and involved rhetoric. Right at
the beginning we are invited to take a journey to the
other heavenly bodies. Thus, the elements of morality
are to be found among superhuman beings among whom
exist an understanding of things and a regular system
of the harmonious conduct of life. Our share m suchi
conclusions must then be small, but there always remains
a beneficent and enlarging idea in picturing that even in
other spheres individual and social life follows one pur-

ii6

MORALS AND LAW 117

pose which cannot be escaped or evaded by any intelU-
gent living creature."

There is good reason for our altering the position of
the statement that Herr Duehring's truth is good for
all possible worlds from the close to the beginning of
the chapter. When once the correctness of Herr Dueh-
ring's notions of morals and law have been established
so as to apply to all world the beneficent notion may
easily be extended to all time. Here again, however,
we run across another final truth of last instance. The
moral universe has " just as well as that of universal
knowledge its general principles and simple elements."
Moral principles are beyond history and the national dis-
tinctions of to-day . . . the various truths from
which in thes) course of development the fuller moral
consciousness, and, so to speak, conscience itself is de-
rived, can, as far as their origin is investigated, claim
a similar acceptation and extent to that of mathematics
and its applications. Real truths are immutable and it
is folly to conceive of correct knowledge as liable to the
attacks o^ time or of change in material conditions.
" Hence the certainty of sound knowledge and the suf-
ficiency of general acceptation forbid to doubt the abso-
lute correctness of the fundamental principles of knowl-
edge. . . . Continual doubt is in itself an evidence
of weakness and is merely the expression of a barren
condition of confusion, which although conscious of pos-
sessing nothing still seeks to maintain the appearance
of holding on to something. Regarding morals, it de-
nies universal principles with respect to the manifold
variations in moral ideas owing to geographical and his-
torical conditions, and thinks that with the admission of
the unavoidable necessity of evil and wickedness there is
no need for it to acknowledge the truth and efficiency

Il8 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

of moral impulses. This mordant scepticism which is
not directed against any false doctrine in particular, but
against human capacity to recognise morality resolves
itself finally into nothingness, it is no more than mere
nihilism. It flatters itself that it can attain supremacy
and give free rein to unprincipled pleasures by destroy-
ing moral ideas and creating chaos. It is greatly, de-
ceived, how^ever, if merely pointing at the inevitable fate
of the intellect with respect to error and truth is suf-
ficient to show by analogy that natural liability to error
does not exclude the arriving at a correct decision but
rather tends to that end."

Up to now we have not commented upon Herr Dueh-
ring's pompous opinions on final truths of the last in-
stance, sovereignty of the will, absolute certainty of
knowledge, and so forth, until the matter could first be
brought to an issue. Up to this point the investigation
has been useful to show how far the separate assertions
of the philosophy of realism had " sovereign validity "
and " unrestricted claim to truth " but we now come to
the question if any and what product of human knowl-
edge can have in particular " sovereign validity " and
" unrestricted claims to truth." If I speak of human
knowledge I do not do so as an affront to the dwellers
in other worlds whom I have not the honor to know, but
only because animals have knowledge also, not sovereign,
however. The dog recognises a divinity in his master,
who may, however, be a great fool.

" Is human thought sovereign? " Before we can an-
.swer " yes " or " no " we must first examine what hu-
man thought is. Is it the thought of an individual man?
No. It exists only as the individual thoughts of many
millions of men, past, present and to come. If I
now say, having comprehended the thought of all men

MORALS AND LAW II9

in the future also under my concept, that it is able to
understand the entire universe, if man only lasts long
enough, and the organs of perception are unlimited, and
the objects to be comprehended have no limits upon their
comprehensibility, my statement is banal and barren.
The most valuable result of such a conclusion would be
to cause in us a tremendous distrust of present day
knowledge. Because, to all appearance, we are just
standing at the threshold of human history and the gen-
erations which will correct us will be much more nu-
merous than those whose knowledge — often with little
enough regard, — we ourselves correct. Herr Duehring
himself explains the necessity of consciousness, knowl-
edge and perception only becoming apparent in a col-
lection of separate individuals. We can only apply the
word sovereignty to the thought of these individuals in
so far as we do not know of any force which can de-
feat thought. But we all know that there is no signifi-
cance to nor power of interpretation of the sovereign
power of the knowledge of the thought of each individ-
ual, and, according to our experience, there is much
more that requires improvement and correction in it than
not.

In other words, the sovereignty of thought is realised
in a number of highly unsovereign men capable of think-
ing, the knowledge which has unlimited pretensions to
truth is realised in a number of relative blunders ; neither
the one nor the other can be fully realised except through
an endless eternity of human existence.

We have here again the same contradiction as above
between the necessary, as an absolute conceived charac-
teristic of human thought, and its reality in the very
limited thinking single individual, a contradiction which
can only be solved in the endless progression of the

I20 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

human race, that is endless as far as we are concerned.
In this sense human thought is just as sovereign as not
— sovereign, and its possibility of knowledge just as
unlimited as limited. It is sovereign and unlimited as
regards its nature, its significance, its possibilities, its
historical end, it is not sovereign and limited with re-
spect to individual expression and its actuality at any
particular time.

It is just the same with eternal truths. If mankind
only operated with eternal truths and with thought which
possessed a sovereign significance and unlimited claims
to truth, mankind would have arrived at a point where
the eternity of thought becomes realised in actuality and
possibility. Thus the famous miracle of the enumerated
innumerable would be realised.

But what about those truths which are so well estab-
lished that to doubt them is to be, as it were, crazy?
That twice two is four, that the three angles of a triangle
are equal to two right angles, that Paris is in France,
that a man will die of hunger if he does not receive food,
etc? Do we not perceive then that there are eternal
truths, final truths of last instance? Quite so. We can
divide the entire field of knowledge in the old-fashioned
way into three great divisions. The first includes all the
sciences which are concerned i with inanimate nature and
which can be treated mathematically, more or less —
mathematics, astronomy, mechanics, physics and chemis-
try. If one like to use big words to express simple
things, it may be said that certain results of these sci-
ences are eternal truths, final truths 'of last instance,
whence they are called the exact sciences. But all the
results are by no means of this character. With the in-
troduction of variable quantities and the extension oi
the variability to the infinitely small and the infinitely

MORALS AND LAW 121

large, mathematics, otherwise erect, meets with its fall, it
has eaten of the apple of knowledge and there has been
opened up to it the path of limitless progress as well
as that of error. The virgin condition of absolute pu-
rity, the undisturbable certainty of all mathematics has
vanished forever, a period of controversy has intervened,
and we have now arrived at the state of affairs in which
most people carry on the operations of multiplication and
division not because they really understand what they are
engaged in, but from mere belief because the operation
has so far always given correct results. Astronomy and
mechanics, physics and chemistry are in a still more con-
fused state, and hypotheses crowd one another thick- as a
swarm of bees. It cannot be otherwise. In physics
we investigate the movements of molecules, in chemistry
, the development of molecules from atoms, and if the
theory of light waves should not be correct we have no
absolute knowledge that we even see these interesting
things. The lapse of time produces a very thin crop of
final truths of last instajjce. In geology we are in a still
more embarrassing situation for we are here involved
in the study of preceding epochs in which, as a matter of
fact, neither we ourselves nor any other human being
ever existed. Here there is much labor spent in the har-
vesting of truths of last 'instance, and they are a scanty
crop withal.

The second division of knowledge is occupied in the
investigation of living organisms. In this field the
changes and causalities are so complex that not only does
the solution of each question bring about the rise of an
unlimited number of new questions, but the solution of
each of these, separate new questions depends upon
years, frequently centuries, of investigation, and can then
be only partially completed. So that the need of sys-

122 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

tematic arrangement of the various interrelations contin-
ually surrounds the final truths of the last instance with
a prolific and spreading growth of hypotheses. Look at
the long succession of progressive steps from Galen to
Malpighi necessary to establish correctly so simple a
thing as the circulation of the blood of mammals, yet
how little we know of the origin of blood corptiscles and
how many mistakes we make in, for example, rationally
connecting the symptoms and cause of a disease. Be-
sides there are frequently discoveries like those of the
cell which compel us to entirely revise all hitherto firmly
established truth of thp last instance in biology, and to
lay numbers of such truths aside for good and all. He
who would therefore in this science undertake the procla-
mation of absolute and immutable truths must be con-
tent with such platitudes as the following : " All men
must die; all female maminals have mammary glands,
etc." He will not even be able to say that the greater
animals digest their food by means of the stomach and
bowels and not with the head because the centralised
system of nerves in the head is not adapted to digestion.
But things are worse with regard to final truths of
last instance in the third group of sciences — the his-
torical. These are concerned with the conditions of hu-
man life, social conditions, forms of law and the state
with their idealistic superstructure of philosophy, re-
ligion, art, etc., in their historic succession and in their
present day manifestations. In organic nature we have
at least to do with a succession of regular phenomena
which regularly repeat themselves as far as our imme-
diate observation goes, within very wide limits. Organic
species have remained on the whole unaltered since the
time of Aristotle. In social history, on the other hand,
repetitions of conditions are the exception, not the rule,

MORALS AND LAW 123

directly we leave behind the prehistoric conditions of
humanity, the stone-age, so-called. Where such repeti-
tions do occur, moreover, they never recur under pre-
cisely similar conditions, as for example the occurrence
of early tribal communism among all peoples anterior
to civilisation and the form of its break up. As re-
gards human history, then, as far as science is concerned,
we are at a greater disadvantage than in biology. Fur-
thermore, when the intimate relations existing between
a social and political phenomenon come to be recognised
it is not, as a rule, perceived until the conditions are
actually on the way to decay. Knowledge is therefore
entirely relative, since it is limited to a given people and
a given epoch, and their nature under transitory social
and political forms, when it examines relations and forms
conclusions. He who therefore is after final truths of
last instance, pure and immutable, will only manage to
catch flat phrases and the most arrant commonplaces,
like these — man cannot, generally speaking, live with-
out working; up to the present men have for the most
part been divided into masters and servants; Napoleon
died on May 5th, 1821, and things of that sort.

It is worth noting that in. this department of knowl-
edge pretended final truths of last instance are met with
most frequently. Only the person who wishes to show
that there are eternal truth, eternal morality, and eternal
justice in human history, and that these are similar in
scope and application to those of mathematics, will pro-
claim that twice two is four and that birds have beaks
and the like to be eternal truths. We can also certainly
rely upon the same friend of humanity taking the oppor-
tunity to explain that all former inventors of eternal
[truths have been more or less asses or charlatans, that
they have been circumscribed by error and have made

124 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

mistakes. Tlie fact of their error, however, is natural
and proves the existence of the truth, and that it can be

_ reached, and the newly arisen prophet has a ready-to-
hand stock of final truths of last instance, eternal law
and eternal justice. This has happened hundreds, nay,
thousands of times, so that it is a wonder that men are
still sufficiently credulous to believe it not only of others,
but 'even of themselves. Here we find a prophet clad
in the armour of righteousness who proclaims in the old-
fashioned way that whoever else may deny there is still
one left to declare final truths of last instance. Denial,
nay, doubt even, is a weakness, barren confusion, mole-
like scepticism, \vorse than blank nihilism, confusion
worse confounded and other little amiabilities of this
sort. As with all prophets, there is no scientific inves-

) tigation, but merely off-hand condemnation.

We might have made mention of the sciences which
invfestigate the laws of human thought, logic and dialec-
tics. Here we are, however, no better off as regards
eternal truths. Herr Duehring explains that the dialectic
proper is pure nonsense, and the many books which
have been and are still being written on logic prove
clearly that final truths of last instance are more sparsely
distributed than many believe.

Moreover, we are not at all alarmed because the step
of science upon which we to-day stand is not a bit more
final than any of the preceding steps. Already it in-
cludes an immense amount of material for investigation
and offers a great chance for specialisation and study to
anyone who desires to become expert in any particular
branch. Whoever expects to find final and immutable'
truths in observations which in the very nature of things
must remain relative for successive generations, and can
only be completed piecemeal, as in cosmogony, geology

MORALS AND LAW 125

ahd human history, which must always be incomplete
owing to the complexity of the historical material, shows
perverse ignorance even where he does liot, as in the
present case, set up claims of personal infallibility.

Truth and error, like all such mutually antagonistic
concepts, have only an absolute reality under very limited
conditions, as we have seen, and as even Herr Duehring
should know by a slight acquaintance with the first ele-
ments of dialectics, which show the insufficiency of all
polar antagonisms. As soon as we bring the antag-
onism of truth and error out of this limited field it be-
comes relative and is not serviceable for new scientific
statements. If we should seek to establish its reality be-
yond those limits we are at once confronted by a di-
lemma, both poles of the antagonism come into conflict
with their opposite ; truth becomes error and error be-
comes truth. Let us take, for example, the well-known
Boyle's law, according to which, the temperature remain-
ing the same, the volume of the gas varies as. the pressure
to which it is subjected. Regnault discovered that this
law does not apply in certain cases. If he had been a
realist-philosopher he would have been obliged to say,
" Boyle's law is mutable, ' therefore it does not possess
absolute truth, therefore it is untrue, therefore it is false."
He would thus have made a greater error than that which
was latent in Boyle's law, his little particle of truth
would have been drowned in a flood of error; he would
in tljis way have elaborated his correct result into an
error compared with which Boyle's law with its particle
of error fastened to it would have appeared as the truth.
Regnault, scientist as he was, did not trouble himself
with such childish performances. He investigated fur-
ther and found that Boyle's law is only approximately
correct, having no validity in the case of gases which

126 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

can be made liquid by pressure when the pressure ap-
proaches the point where liquefaction sets in. Boyles law
therefore is shown only to be true within specific bounds.
But is it absolute, a final truth of last instance within spe-
cific bounds ? No physicist would say so. He would say
that it is correct for certain gases and within certain
limits of pressure and temperature, and even then within
these somewhat narrow liftiits he would not exclude the
possibility of a still narrower limitation or change in
application as the result of further investigation. This
is how final truths of last instance stand in physics, for
example. Really scientific works as a rule avoid such
dogitiatic expressions as truth and error, but they are
constantly cropping up in works like the Philosophy of
Reality, where mere loose talking vaunts itself the su-
preme result of sovereign thought.

But a naive reader may say, " Where has Herr Duehr-
ing expressly stated that the content of his philosophy
of reality is final truth of the last instance? " Well, for
example, in his dithyramb, on his system which we
quoted above, and again where he says " Moral truths as
far as they are known are as sound as those of mathe-
matics." Does not Herr Duehring explain tliat by rea-
son of his powers of criticism and searching investiga-
tions, the fundamental philosophy has been brought to
light and that he has thus bestowed upon us final truths
of last instance? But if Herr Duehring does not set up
such a claim either on his own behalf or that of his time,
if he says that some time in the misty future final truths
of last instance will be established, and that therefore his
own statements are merely accidental and confused, a
kind of " mole-like scepticism " and " barren confusion,"
what is all the fuss about, and what useful purpose is
served by Herr Duehring?

MORALS AND LAW \2'J

If we gain no ground in the matter of truth and
error we gain less in respect of good and evil. Here
we have an antagonism of ethical significance, and ethics
is a department of human history in which final truths
are but slight and few. From people to people, from
age to age, there have been such changes in the ideas
of good and evil that these concepts are contradictory
;n different periods and among different peoples. But
some one may remark, " Good is still not evil and evil
is not good; if good and evil are confused all morality
is abolished, and each may do what he will." When the
rhetoric is stripped away this is the opinion of Herr
Duehring. Bpt the matter is not to be disposed of so
easily. If things were as easy as that there would be
no dispute about good and evil. Everybody would know
what was good and what was evil. How is it to-day,
however? What system of ethics is preached to us to-
day? There is first the Christian-feudal, a survival of
the early days of faith, which is as a matter of fact sub-
divided into Catholic and Protestant, of which there are
still further subdivisions, from the Jesuit-Catholic and
orthodox Protestant to loosely drawn ethical systems.
There figure also the modern or bourgeois, and still fur-
ther the proletarian future system of morality, so that
the progressive European countries alone present three
contemporaneous and coexistent actual theories of eth-
ics. Which is the true one ? No single one of them, re-
garded as a finality, but that system assuredly possesses
the most elements of truth which promises the longest
duration, which existent in the present is also involved in
the revolution of the future, the proletarian.

But if we now see that the three classes of modern
society, the feudal aristocracy, the bourgeoisie and the
proletarian, have their distinctive ethical systems, we can

128 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

only conclude therefrom that mankind consciously or
unconsciously shapes its moral views in accordance with
the material facts upon which in the last instance the
class existence is based ^ upon the ecotiomic conditions
under which production and exchange are carried on.

But in the three above mentioned systems of ethics
there is much which is common to all three of them, and
might not this at least constitute a portion of an eter-
nally stable system of ethics? These ethical theories
pass through three distinct steps in their historical de-*
velopment, they have therefore a common historical basis
and hence necessarily much in common. Further, for
approximately similar economic stages there must, neces- '
sarily be a coincidence of similar stages of economic de-
velopment, and ethical theories must of necessity coincide
with a greater or less degree of closeness. From the
vety moment when private property in movables de-
veloped there had to be ethical sanctions of general ef-
fect in all communities in which private property pre-
vailed, thus: Thou shalt not steal. Is this command-
ment, then, an eternal commandment? By no means.
In a socitety in which the motive for theft did not exist
stealing would only be the practice of the weak-minded,
and the preacher of morals who proclaimed " Thou shalt
not steal " as an eternal commandment would only, be
laughed at for his pains.

We here call attention to the attempt to force a sort
of moral dogmatism upon us as eternal, final, immutable
moral law, upon the pretext that the moral law is pos-
stessed of fixed principles which transcend history and
the variations of individual peoples. We state, on the
contrary, that up to the present time all ethical theory is
in the last instance a testimony to the existence of cer-
tain economic conditions prevailng in any community

MORALS AND LAW 129

at any particular time. And in proportion as society
developed class-antagonisms, morality became a class
morality and either justified the interests and domina-
tion of the ruling class, or as soon as a subject class
became strong enough justified revolt against the domi-
nation of the ruling class and the interests of the subject
class. That, by this means, there is an advance made
in morals as a whole, just as there is in all other branches
of human knowledge, there can be no doubt. But we
have not yet advanced beyond class morals. Real human
morality superior to class morality and its traditions will
not be possible until a stage in human history has been
reached in which class antagonisms have not only been
overcome but have been forgotten as regards the con-
duct of life. Now the colossal egotism of Herr Dueh-
ring may be understood when it is seen that, on the eve
of a revolution which will bring about a state of society
devoid of classes, he claims from the midst of an old and
class divided society to proclaim an eternal system of
morals independent of time and material change. He
himself declares what up to the present has been hid
from the rest of us that he understands the structure of
this future society at least as regards its salient features.
In conclusion he makes a revelation which is essen-
tially original but none the less " fundamental respecting
the origin of evil." We have the fact that the type of
the cat with its inherent treachery is pictured as the
representative animal type, and this also displays a form
of character to be found also in man. There is no
mystery then about evil if one can detect a mysticism
in the cat or any other beast of prey. Evil is — the cat.
Goethe was evidently wrong when he introduced Mephis-
topheles as a black dog instead of a cat similarly colored.
This is ethics suited not only to all worlds but to cats also.

Equality

By dint of experience we have come to learn Herr
Duehring's " method." It consists in separating each
department of knowledge into what are assumed to be
its most simple elements, then of making so called self
evident axioms with regard to these simple elements,
and thereupon operating with the results obtained in this
way. Thus a sociological question is to be " decided
on simple axiomatic principles just as if it were a matter
of elementary mathematics." - Thus the application of
the mathematical method to history, ethics and law gives
mathematical certainty to the final results which appear
as pure and immutable truths.

This is only another form of the old ideological, a
priori method so called, which learned the properties of
an object not from the object itself but derived them
by proof from the concept of the object. First you
derive a concept of the object from the actual object,
tlien you turn the spit and measure the object in terms
of its derivative the concept. The concept is not shaped
after the pattern of the object but the object after the
pattern of the concept. In Herr Duehring's method, the
simplest elements, the last abstractions to which he can
attain do duty for the concept which is unchangeable,
the simplest elements are under the best conditions purely
imaginary in their nature. The philosophy of realism
hence appears to be mere ideology, and has no derivation

130

MORALS AND LAW I3I

from real life but is absolutely dependent upon the im-
agination. When such an ideologist proceeds to con-
struct a system of morals and law from his concept of
the so-called simplest elements of society instead oT
from the real social conditions of the men about him,
where does he get his material for construction? The
material evidently consists of two kinds — firstly, the
slim vestiges of reality which are still present in every
fundamental abstraction, and secondly in the actual con-
tent which our ideologist evolves from his own conscious-
ness. And what does he discover in his consciousness?
For the most part moral and ethical philosophic ideas
and these constitute an expression corresponding more
or less closely, whether positive or negative, harmonious
or hostile, with the social and political conditions which
environ him. Besides he probably has notions derived
from literature pertaining to these conditions, and finally
he has possibly person^ idiosyncrasies. Let our ide-
ologist dodge all that he can, the historical reality which
he has thrown out of doors comes in again at the win-
dow and although he may fancy that he is employed in^
the manufacture of moral and legal doctrines good for
all worlds and all ages he is actually making a distorted,
counterfeit of the conservation or revolutionary tenden-
cies of his time, because torn from its real place, as things
seen in a concave mirror are upside down.

Herr Duehring therefore resolves society into its
simplest elements and discovers accordingly that the most
elementary society consists of at least two human beings.
He thereupon operates with these two human beings to
produce his axiom. Then he delivers himself of the
fundamental maxim of morals, " Two human wills, as
such, are entirely identical, and the one can in conse-
quence make no positive demands upon the other."

132 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

Here the " foundation of moral law " is apparent, so " in
order to develop the principal concepts of justice we re-
quire two human beings under absolutely simple and
elementary conditions."

That two human wills or two human beings are just
alike is not only no axiom, it is a glaring exaggeration.
In the first place two human beings may differ as re-
gards sex, and this simple fact shov/s us, if we look at
childhood for a moment, that the elements of society are
not two men, but a little man and a little woman, which
constitute a family, the simplest' and earliest form of as-
sociation for productive purposes. But Herr Duehring
cannot by any means agree to this. On the one hand
the two constituents of society might very possibly be
made alike and on the other Herr Duehring would not
be able to construct the moral and legal equality of man
and woman from the original family. Therefore one of
two things must take place. Either the molecules of
Herr Duehring's society from the multiplication of which
all society is built up is merely a priori and destined to
fail, since two men cannot produce a child, or we must
consider them as two heads of families. In this case
the entire foundation is made its very opposite. In-
stead of the equality of man we have at the most the
equality of two heads of families, and since women are
not comprehended we have the consequent subjection of
women.

We are sorry to warn the reader that these two no-
torious men cannot be got rid of, for a long time. They
take up in the realm of social conditions the role hereto-
fore played by the dwellers in the other world with
whom it is to be hoped we have now finished. Should
any question of political economy, of politics or any other
such matter require solution, out come the two men and

MORALS AND LAW . 133

make the thing axiomatic forthwith. This is a remark-
able, clever, and system-shaping discover of our system-
shaping philosopher. But to ,gi.ve^ tlie truth its due we
are- reg^TJ^^^ul!}' bcuim to say that he did not discover the
two men. They are common to the whole of the eight-
eenth century. They appear in Rousseau's Treatise on
Equality, 1754, where, by the way, they serve to prove
axiomatically the direct opposite of Herr Duehring's
contentions. They play an important part in political
economy from Adam Smith to Ricardo, but here they
are so far unequal that they follow different trades, prin-
cipally hunting and fishing, and they exchange their
mutual products. They serve through the entire eight-
eenth century principally as mere illustrative examples,
and the originality of Herr Duehring consists in the
fact that he elevates this method of illustration to a
fundamental method for all social science and to a meas-
ure of all historical instruction. There is no easier
way to arrive at " a really scientific philosophy of things
and men."

In order to create the fundamental axiom the two men
and their wills are mutually equal and neither has any
right to lord it over the other. We cannot find two
suitable men. They must be two men who are so free
from all national, economic, political and religious con-
ditions, from sex and personal peculiarities that nothing
remains of either of them but the mere concept " man "
and then they are entirely equal. They are therefore
two fully-equipped ghosts conjured up by that very Herr
Duehring who particularly ridicules and denounces
" spiritistic " movements. These two phantoms must of
course do all that their wizard wants of them and so
their united productions are a matter of complete in-
difference to the rest of the world.

134 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

-^_Now let US follow Herr Duehring's axiomatic utter-
ances a ififle furiiier. These two men cannot make posi-
tive demands upon each- other. The one who does so
and enforces his demand thereupon performs " tirTunjust ^
act, and with this idea as a foundation Herr Duehring
explains the injustice, the tyranny, the servitude, in short
all the evil happenings of history up to the present time.
Now Rousseau has in the work above mentioned proved
the contrary just as axiomatically, by means of two
men. A. cannot forcibly enslave B. except by putting
B. in a place where he cannot do without A. This is
far too materialistic an idea for Herr Duehring. He
has accordingly put the same matter somewhat differ-
ently. .Two shipwrecked men being by themselves on an
island form a society. Their wills are, theoretically
speaking, entirely equal and this is acknowledged- by
both. But in reality the inequality is tremendous. A.
is resolute and energetic, B. inert, irresolute and
slack. A. is sharp, B. is stpuid. How long will it
be before A. imposes his will upon B., first by taking the
upper hand, and keeping it habitually, under the pre-
tence that B.'s submission is voluntary. Whether the
form of voluntariness continues or force is resorted to
slavery still is slavery. Voluntary entering into a state
of slavery lasted all through the Middle Ages in Ger-
many up to the Thirty Years War. When serfdom was
abolished in Prussia after the defeats of 1806 and 1807
and with it the duty of the nobiUty to take care of their
subjects in need, sickness and old age the peasants there-
upon petitioned to be allowed to remain in slavery — for
who would care for them when they were in trouble?
The concept of the two men is just as applicable to in-
equality and slavery as it is to equality and mutual aid,
and since, under the penalty of extinction, men must as-

MORALS AND LAW 135

sume the headship of a family, hereditary slavery may
be foreseen in it.

Let us put this view of the case on one side for a mo-
ment. We assume that we are convinced by Herr Dueh-
ring's maxim and that we are zealous for the full equali-
sation of the two wills, for de " universal sovereignty
of man" for the "sovereignty ti the individual," mag-
nificent expressions, in comparison with which Stirner's
" individual " with his private property is a mere bungler
though Le might claim his modest part therein. Then
\\e are all free and independent. All? No, not even
now. There are still " occasional dependent relations "
but these are to be explained " on grounds which must
be sought not in the action of two wills as such but in
a third consideration, in the case of children, for ex-
ample, in the inadequateness of their self-assertion."

Indeed, the foundations of independence are not tj be
sought in the realisation of the two wills as such. Nat-
urally not, since the realisation of one of the wills is
thus interfered with. Bu': they must be sought i.i v.
third direction. And wnat is the third direction? The
actual fixing of a subjected will as an inadequate one.
So far has our realistic philosopher departed from real-
ity that will, the real content, the characteristic determi-
nation of this will serves him as a third ground, for
abstract and indefinite speech. However this ma}' b-;
we must agree that equality has its exceptions. It does
not apply to a will which, is infected v/ith inadequateness
of self expression.

Further, " Where the animal and the human are inter-
mingled in one person can one in the name of a second
fully developed human being demand the same actions
as in the case of a single human being . . . our sup-
position is liere of two morally unequal persons of which

136 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

one has a share of purely animal characteristics in a
certain sense the typical fundamental conception which
characterises the differences in and between groups of
men." Now the reader may see by these modest ex-
cuses in which Herr Duehring turns and winds like a
Jesuit priest to establish a casuistical position, how far
the human human can prevail over the Lestial human,
how far he can employ deceit, warlike, keen terrorising
means of deceit against the latter without overstepping
immutable ethical bounds.

Therefore, if two persons are "morally unequal " there'
is an end of equality. It was therefore not worth while
to conjure up two fully equal men, since there are no two
individuals who are morally equal. But inequality con-
sists in this that one is a human being and the other has
some part of the animal in his composition. It is evi-
dent that since man is descended from the animal cre-
ation he ii not free from animality. So that as re-
gards man degrees of animality can only be differentiated
to a greater or less degree. A division of men into
two sharply differentiated groups, into humans and hu-
man beasts, into good and bad, into sheep and goats, even
Christianity, let alone the realist philosophy, is aware,
implies a judge who makes the distinction. But who
shall be judge as regards the realist philosophy? We
must follow the practice of Christians according to which
the pious little sheep undertake to act as judges of the
universe against their unworthy neighbors the goats, with
results which are too well known. The sect of the realist
philosophers supposing it ever comes into existence will
certainly not give up anything quietly. This is indeed a
matter of small concern to us but we are interested in
the confession that as a conclusion of the moral inequal-
ity between men equality no longer exists.

MORALS AND LAW 137

Again " If the one acted in accordance with truth and
science but the other in accordance with a superstition
or prejudice a mutual disagreement would generally oc-
cur. At a certain silage of incapacity barbarism or an
evil tendency of character must in all circumstances pro-
duce an antagonism. Force is the last resort not alone
with children and incapables. The peculiar character-
istics of whole classes of men, whether in a state of na-
ture or civilised, may render necessary the subjection of
their inimical will, due to their own impotency, in order
to bring them into harmony with social arrangements.
But such a man has challenged his own equality by the
perversity of his inimical and hurtful actions, and if he
suffers at the hands of a superior force he only reaps the
recoil of his own actions.'

Thus not only moral but spiritual inequality is suffi-
ciently potent to do away with the " full equality " of
two wills and to furnish an ethical rule by which all the
shameful acts of civilised plundering states against back-
ward peoples down to the atrocities of the Russians in
Turkestan may be justified. When General Kaufmann,
in the summer of 1873, fell upon the Tartar tribes of the
Jomuden, burnt their tents, mowed down their wives and
families, as the command ran, he explained that the de-
struction was due to the perversity, the inimical minds
of the people of the Jomuden, and was employed for the
purpose of bringing them back to the social order, and
the means used by him had been the most efficient

But he who wills the end wills also the means. But
he was not so cruel as tojnsult the Jomuden people in
addition and to say that he massacred them in the name
of equality, that he considered their wills equal to his
own. And again in this conflict the select, those who
pose as champions of truth and science, the realist philos-

TjS LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

opliers in the last instance must be able to distinguish
superstition, prejudice, barbarism, evil tendencies of
character, and when force and subjection are necessary
to bring about equality. So that equality now means
equalisation by means of force, and the will of one recog-
nises the will of the other as equal by overthrowing it.

The phrase that an external will in its bringing about
equalisation by force is only to be regarded as produc-
ing equality is nothing but a distortion of the Hegelian
theory that punishment is a right of the criminal. " That
punishment is to be regarded as implying a right to it
in accordance with which the criminal is respected as a
rational being." (Rechtsphil, loo.)

We may pause here. It would be superfluous to fol-
low Herr Duehring any further in the piecemeal destruc-
tion of his axiomatically established equality, universal
human sovereignty, etc., to observe how fie brings society
into existence with two men and produces yet a third in
order to establish the state, because to put the matter-
briefly, no majority can be had without the third, and
without him, that is, without the domination of the ma-
jority over the minority, no state can exist. There is no
need either for us to observe how he launches his future
social state on the more peaceful waters of construction,
where we may have the honor some fine morning of be-
holding it. We have seen so far that the complete
equality of two wills only exists as long as they do not
will anything. That as soon as they cease to become
human wills as such and to be converted into real indi-
vidual wills, into wills of real persons, that is, equality
ceases ; that childhood, idiocy, animality so called, super-
stition, prejudice, supposed lack of power on the one
hand and supposed humanity and insight into truth and
science on the other hand, that therefore every difference

MORALS AND LAW 139

in the quality of the two wills and in the degree of intel-
ligence accompanying it justifies an inequality which may
go as far as subjection. Why should we seek further
since Herr Duehring has brought his own edifice of
equality which he so laboriously constructed tumbling to
the ground?

But if we are now prepared to meet Herr Duehrlng's
silly and incompetent consideration of equality of rights
we are not yet ready to take issue with the idea itself
which through the influence of Rousseau has played a
theatrical part, and since the days of the great Revolution
a practical and political part, and now plays no insignifi-
cant role in the agitation carried on by the socialist move-
ment of all countries. The establishment of its scientific
soundness has a value for the proletarian agitation.

The idea that all men have something in common as
men and that they are equal with respect to that common
quality is naturally older than history. But the modern
doctrine of equality is something quite different than
that. This derives from the property of humanity, com-
mon to man, the equality of man, as man, or at least of all
citizens of a given state or of all members of a given so-
ciety. Until the conclusion 6f equality of rights in the
state and society was deduced from the original notion
of relative equality, and until this conclusion was to be
stated as something natural and self evident, many thou-
sands of years had to pass and indeed have passed. In
the oldest and most elementary communities it may Be
said that equality of rights among the members existed
in the highest degree, women, slaves, and foreigners,
however, being excluded. Among the Greeks and Ro-
mans inequality existed to a greater degree. Greeks
and barbarians, freemen and slaves, citizens and sub-
jects, Roman citizens and Roman subjects (to employ

I40 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

a comprehensive expression) that these should have
any claim to equality of political rights would have been
regarded by the ancients necessarily as madness. Under
the Roman Empire there was a complete elimination of
all these distinctions with the excepiton of those of free-
men and slaves. There arose therefore as far as the
freemen were concerned that equality of private indi-
viduals upon which Roman law was founded and de-
veloped as the most perfect system of jurisprudence based
on private property with which we are acquainted. But
while the contradiction of freemen and slaves, existed
there could be no statement based upon the universal
equality of man as such, as was recently shown in the
slave states of the Northern American Union.

Christianity recognised one equality on the part of all
men, that of an equal taint of original sin, which en-
tirely corresponded with its character as a religion of
slaves and the oppressed. In the next place it recog-
nised completely the equality of the elect but it only de-
clared this at the beginning of its teaching. The traces
of common property in possessions which may be found
occasionally in the earliest days of the religion was based
rather upon the mutual assistance which persecuted peo-
ple hold out to each other, than upon any real concepts
of human equality. Very soon the establishment of the
antithesis between the priesthood and the laity put an
end to even this expression of Christian equality. The
inundation of Western Europe by the Germans abolished
for centuries all concepts of equality by the creation of
a universal, social and political gradation of rank of a
much more complicated nature than had existed up to
that time. Contemporaneously with this Western and
Middle Europe entered upon a historical development,
shaped for the first time a compact civilisation, and a

MORALS AND LAW 14!

system which was on the one hand dynamic and on the
other conservative, the leading national states. There-
upon a soil was prepared for the declaratiomof the equal-
ity of human rights so recently ma'de.

The feudal middle ages moreover developed the class in
its womb destined to be the apostle of the modern agita-
tion for equality, the bourgeois class. In the beginning
even under the feudal system the bourgeois class had de-
veloped the prevalent hand-industry and the exchange of
products even within feudal society to a high degree
considering the circumstances, until with the close of the
fifteenth century the great discoveries of lands beyond
the seas opened before it a new and individual course.
The trade beyond Europe which up to that time had
been carried on between the^ Italians and the Levant was
now extended to America and the Indies and soon ex-
ceeded in amount the reciprocal trade of the European
countries as well as the internal commerce of any partic-
ular land. American gold and silver flooded Europe and
like a decomposing element penetrated all the fissures,
crevices and pores of feudal society. The system of
hand-labor was no longer sufficient for the growing de-
mand, it was replaced by manufacture in the leading in-
dustries of the most highly developed peoples.

A corresponding change in the political structure fol-
lowed this powerful revolution in the economic condi-
tions of society but by no means immediately. The
organisation of the State remained feudal in form while
society became more and more bourgeois. Trade, par-
ticularly international, and to a greater degree world-
commerce demanded for its development the free and
unrestricted possessors of commodities, who have equal-
ity of right to exchange commodities at least in one and
the same place. The transition from hand labor to man-

142 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

ufacture presupposes the existence of a number of free
laborers, free on the one hand from the fetters of the
gild and on the other free to employ their labor force
in their own behalf, who could make contracts for the
hire of their labor force to the manufacturers and there-
fore face him as if endowed with equal rights as contract-
ing parties. At last then there arose equality of rights
and actual equality of all human labor, for labor force
finds its unconscious but strongest expression in the law
of value of modern bourgeois economy according to
which the value of a commodity finds its measure in the
socially necessary labor incorporated in it. But where
the economic circumstances render freedom and equality
of rights necessary, the political code, gild restrictions
and peculiar privileges oppose them at every step. Lo-
cal provisions of a legal character, dififerential taxation, ■
exceptional laws of every description, interfere not only
with foreigners or colonials but frequently enough also
with whole categories of citizens in the nation itself.
Gild privileges in particular constituted a continual im-
pediment to the development of manufacture. The
course was nowhere open and the chances of the bour-
geois victory were by no means equal, but to make the
course open was the first and ever more pressing neces-
sity.

As soon as the demand for the abolition of feudalism
and for the equality of rights was set on the order of the
day it had necessarily to take an ever widening scope.
As soon as the claim was made in behalf of commerce
and industry it had also to be made in behalf of the
peasants who, being in every stage of slavery from serf-
dom labored for the most part without any return for
the feudal lords and were obliged in addition to perform
innumerable services for them and for the State. . Also

MORALS AND LAW 143

it became desirable to abolish feudal privileges, the im-
munity of the nobility from taxation, and the superiority
which attached to a certain status. And as men no longer
lived in a world empire like the Roman, but in an in-
dependent system with states which approximated to a
similar degree of bourgeois development and which had
intercourse with one another on an equal footing, the
demand took on necessarily a universal character reach-
ing beyond the individual state, and freedom and equal-
ity were thus proclaimed as human rights. But as re-
gards the special bourgeois character of these human
rights, it is significant that the American Constitution
which was the first to recognise these rights of man in
the same breath established slavery among the colored
people : class privileges were cursed, race privileges were
blessed.

As is well known, the bourgeois class as soon as it
escaped from the domination of the ruling class in the
cities, by which process the medieval stage passes into
the modern, has been steadily and inevitably dogged by
a shadow, the proletariat. So also the bourgeois de-
mands for equality are accompanied by the proletarian
demands for equality. Directly the demand for the
abolition of class privileges was made by the bourgeois
there succeeded the proletarian demand for the abolition
of classes themselves. This was first made in a re-
ligious form and was based upon early Christianity, but
later derived its support from the bourgeois theories of
equality. The proletarians take the bourgeois at their
word, they demand the realisation of equality not merely
apparently, not merely in the sphere of government but
actually in the sphere of society and economics. Since
the French bourgeoisie of the great Revolution placed
equality in the foreground of their movement, the French

144 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

proletariat has answered it blow for blow with the de-
rnand for social and economic equality, and equality has
become the special battle cfy of the French proletariat.

The demand for equality as made by the proletariat
has a double significance. Either it is, as was particu-
larly the case at first, in the Peasants' War, for example,
a natural reaction against social inequalities which were
obvious, against the contrast between rich and poor,
masters and slaves^ luxurious and hungry, and as such
it is simply an expression of revolutionary instinct find-
ing its justification in that fact and in that fact alone.
On the other hand it may arise from reaction against
the bourgeois claims of equality from which it deduces
more or less just and far reaching claims, serves as a
means of agitation to stir the workers, by means of a
cry adopted by the capitalists themselves, against the
capitalists, and in this case stands or falls with bourgeois
equality itself. In both cases the real content of the
proletarian claims of equality is the abolition of classes.
Every demand for equality transcending this is of neces-
sity absurd. We have already given examples and can
furnish many more when we come to consider Herr
Duehring's prophecies of the future.

So the notion of equality, in its proletarian as well as
in its bourgeois form, is itself a historic product. Cer-
tain circumstances were required to produce it and these
in their turn proceeded from a long anterior history.
It is therefore anything but an eternal truth. And if
the public regards it as self-evident in one sense or an-
other if it, as Marx remarks " already occupies the po-
sition of a popular prejudice " it is not due to its being
an axiomatic truth but to the universal broadening of
conception in accordance with the spirit of the eighteenth
century. If Herr Duehring then can set up his two

MORALS AND LAW 145

famous men in housekeeping on the grounds of equality,
it is apparent that the prejudices of the mass of men in
its favor is an antecedent condition. In fact Herr Dueh-
ring calls his philosophy the " natural " because it pro-
ceeds from generally recognised things, which appear to
him to be entirely natural. But why they seem to him to
be natural he does not take the trouble to enquire.

Freedom and Necessity

(The former part of this section is taken up with a
criticism of Herr Duehring's knowledge of law of which
he had boasted. It is a purely technical discussion and
is of merely local interest. Having disposed of Dueh-
ring's juristic claims Engels proceeds to discuss " Free-
dom and Necessity " as follows. )

One cannot deal properly with the question of morals
and law without a discussion of free will, human re-
sponsibility, and the limits of necessity and freedom.
The reaHstic philosophy has not only one but two solu-
tions of these questions.

" One must substitute for false theories of freedom
the actual conditions in which reason on the one hand
and instinct on the other unite upon a middle ground.
The fundamental facts of this sort of dynamics are to
be learned from observation and as regards the calcula-
tion in advance of phenomena which have not yet oc-
curred, we must judge of them in general terms accord-
ing to their special qualities. In this way the silly
speculations with respect to the freedom of the will which
have wasted thousands of years are not only entirely re-
moved but are replaced by something positive, some-
thing useful for practical life." So freedom of the
will consists in this that reason impels men to the right
and irrationahty to the left and according to this parallel-
ogram of forces the true direction is that of the diagonal.

MORALS AND LAW 147

Freedom would therefore be the average between insight
and impulse, between understanding and lack of under-
standing, and its degree would to use an astronomical
expression be empirically established by the " personal
equation." But a few pages later we read " We estab-
lish moral responsibility upon freedom by which we
only mean susceptibility to known motives according to
the measure of natural and acquired reason. All such
motives in spite of antagonism realise themselves in ac-
tion with the inevitability of natural law, but we count
upon this inevitable necessity when we deal with morals."
This second definition of freedom which is quite op-
posed to the first is nothing but a very weak paraphrase
of Hegel's notions on the subject. Hegel was the first
man to make a proper explanation o± the relations of
freedom and necessity. In his eyes freedom is f^p ]-prnp-
nition of necessity . " Necessity is Wind only in so far
as it is not understood. Freedom does not consist in
an imaginary independence of natural laws but in a
knowledge of these laws and in the possibility thence
derived of applying them intelligently to given ends.
This is true both as regards the laws of nature and of those
which control the spiritual and physical existence of man
himself, — two classes of laws which we can distinguish
as an abstraction but not in reality. Freedom of the will
consists in nothing but the ability to come to a decision
when one is in possession of a knowledge, of the facts.
The freer the judgment of a man then in relation to a
given subject of discussion so much the more necessity
is there for his arrival at a positive decision. On the
other hand lack of certainty arising from ignorance which
apparently chooses voluntarily between many different
and contradictory possibiHties of decision shows thereby
its want of freedom, its control by things which it should

^

lA^C^^ landmI\rks of scientific socialism

.< Z' |in reality control. Freedom, therefore, consists in mas-
''V* vi^^y °^^'" ourselves and external nature founded upon
Iknowledge of the necessities of nature, it is, therefore,
Aecessarily a product of historical development. The
first human beings to become differentiated from the
lower animals were in all essentials as devoid of free-
dom as these animals themselves but each step in human
development was a step towards freedom. At the thresh-
old of human history stands the discovery of the trans-
formation of mechanical motion in heat, the generation
of fire by friction ; at the close of development up to the
present stands the discovery of the transformation of
heat into mechanical motion, the steam engine. In spite
of the tremendous revolution in the direction of freedom
which the steam engine has produced in society it is not
yet half complete. There is no question that the pro-
duction of fire by friction still surpasses it as an agent
in the liberation of humanity. Because the production of
fire by friction for the first time gave man power over
the forces of nature and separated him for ever from the
lower animals. The steam engine can never bridge so
wide a chasm. It appears however as the representative
of all those productive forces by the help of which alone
a state of society is rendered possible in which no class
subjection or pain will be produced by reason of the
lack of means for the sustenance of the individual, in
which moreover it will be possible to speak of real hu-
man freedom as arising from living in accordance with
the recognised laws of nature. But considering the
youth of humanity it would be absurd to wish to impute
, any universal absolute validity to our present philosoph-
ical views, and it follows from the mere facts that the
whole of history up to the present time is to be regarded
as the history of the period extending from the time of

MORALS AND LAW

149

the practical discovery of the transformation of mechan-
ical movement into heat to that of the transformation of
heat into mechanical movement.

(The above constitutes a reply to the view which re-
gards history simply as the record of humf>.n error and
is followed by a discussion of Duehriog'.f opinions in
that regard.)

0^ ^"^

J>

i/U^'

M^

CHAPTER VII

THE DIALECTIC

Quantity and Quality

(Here Heir Duehring contends " The first and most
important staternent with respect to the foundation logi-
cal properties of existence points to the exclusion of
contradiction. Contradiction is a category which can
belong to thought alone but which can pertain to noth-
ing real. There are no contradictions in things; in
other words the law of contradiction is itself the crown-
ing point of absurdity." To which Engels replies as
follows) :

The thought content of the foregoing passages is con-
tained in the statement that contradiction is an absurdity
and cannot occur in the actual world. This statement
will have for people of average common sense the same
self-evident truth as to say that straight cannot be
crooked nor crooked straight. But the differential cal-
culus shows in spite of all the protests of common sense
that under certain conditions straight and crooked are
identical, and reaches thereby a conclusion which is not
in harmony with the common sense view of the absurdity
of there being any identity between straight and crooked.
Considering moreover the significant role which the so
called Dialectic of the Contradiction played in the ancient
Greek philosophy, a stronger opponent than Herr Dueh-
ring would be obliged to meet it with better arguments
than a mere affirmation and a number of epithets.

As long as we regard things as static and without life,

150

THE DIALECTIC I5I

each by itself, sepafately, we do not run against any con-
tradictions in them. We find certain qualities sometimes
common, sometimes distinctive, occasionally contradic-
tory, but in this last case they belong to different objects
and are hence not self contradictory. While we follow
this method we pursue the ordinary metaphysical method
of thought. But it is quite different when we consider
things in their movement, in their change, their life and
their mutually reciprocal relations. Then we come at
once upon contradictions. Motion is itself a contradic-
tion since simple mechanical movement from place to
place can only accomplish itself by a body being at one
and the same moment in one place and simultaneously in
another place by being in one and the same place and yet
not there. And motion is just the continuous establish-
ing and dissolving the contradiction.

Here we have a contradiction which is "objective, and
so to speak corporeal in things and events." And what
does Herr Duehring say about it? He affirms that "in
rational mechanics there is no bridge between the strictly
static and the dynamic." Finally the reader is able to
see that there is behind this pretty little phrase of Herr
Duehring nothing more than this— ^ that the metaphys-
ical mode of thought can absolutely not pass from the
idea of rest to that of motion because the aforesaid con-
tradiction intervenes. Motion is absolutely inconceivable
to the metaphysician, because a contradiction. And as
he affirms the inconceivability of motion he admits the
existence of this contradiction against his will and
therefore admits that it constitutes an objective contra-
diction in actual facts and events, and is moreover an ac-
tual fact.

But if simple mechanical motion contains a contradic-
tion in itself still more so do the higher forms of motion

152 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

of matter and to a high degree organic life and its de-
velopment. We saw above that life consists chiefly in
this that a being is at one and the same time itself and
something different. Life itself then is likewise a con-
tradiction contained in things and events, always estab-
lishing and dissolving itself, and as soon as the contra-
diction ceases life also ceases, death comes on the scene.
Thus we saw also that we cannot put an end to the Con-
tradictions in the realm of thought, and how for example
the contradiction between the intrinsically unlimited pos-
sibilities of human knowledge and its actual existence in
the persons of human beings with limited faculties and
powers of knowledge, is dissolved in the, for us at least,
practically endless progression of the race, in unending
progress.

We stated just now that higher mathematics holds as
one of its basic principles that straight and crooked may
be identical under certain circumstances. It shows an-
other contradiction, that lines which apparently inter-
sect yet are parallel from five to six centimeters from
the point of intersection, should be such as should never
intersect although indefinitely produced, and yet, not-
withstanding these and even greater contradictions, it
produces not only correct results but results which are
unattainable by lower mathematics.

But even in the latter there is a host of contradictions.
It is a contradiction, for example, that a root of A should
be and actually is a power of A. A to the power of one-
half equals the square root of A. It is contradiction
that a negative magnitude should be the square of any-
thing, since every negative magnitude multiplied by it-
self gives a positive square. The square root of minus
one is therefore not only a contradiction but an absurd
.contradiction, a veritable absurdity. And yet the square

THE DIALECTIC ^ 153

root of minus one is in many instances the necessary
result of correct mathematical operationSj nay further,
where would mathematics higher or lower be if one were
forbidden to operate with the square root of minus one.
Mathematics itself enters the realm of the dialectic and
significantly enough it was a dialectic philosopher, Des-
cartes, who introduced this progressiveness into mathe-
matics. As is the relation of the mathematics of varia-
ble magnitudes to that of invariable quantities, so is the
relation of the dialectic method of thought to the meta-
physical. This does not prevent the great majority of
mathematicians from only recognising the dialectic in
the realms of mathematics, a condition of things satis-
factory to those who operate in the antiquated, limited,
metaphysical fashion by methods attained by means of
the dialectic.

(Duehring having made an attack upon Marx's " Cap-
ital " because of its reliance upon the dialectic, and hav-
ing indulged in the epithets to which he is too prone with
respect to this work, Engels takes up its defence in that
respect as follows) :

It is not our business to concern ourselves at this point
with the correctness or incorrectness of the investigations
of Marx as regards economics, but only with the appli-
cation which he makes of the dialectic method. So much
is certain, that it is only now that the readers of " Capi-
tal " will by the aid of Herr Duehring understand what
they have read properly, and among them Herr Dueh-
ring himself, who in the year 1867 was still in a position,
as far as possible to a man of his calibre, to review the
book rationally. He did not then, it may be noted, first
translate the arguments of Marx into Duehringese, as
now seems indispensable to him. Even if he at that

154 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

I

time made the blunder of identifying the Marxian dia-
lectic with that of Hegel he had not altogether lost the
ability to distinguish methods from the results attained
by them and to comprehend that an abuse of the former
is no contradiction of the latter.

Herr Duehring's most astonishing observation is that
from the Marxian standpoint, " in the last analysis every-
thing is identical," that therefore in the eyes of Marx,
for example, capitalists and wage workers, feudal, capi-
talistic and social methods of production are " all one."
In order to show the possibility of such sheer stupidity it
only remains to point out that the mere word " dialec-
tic " makes Herr Duehring mentally irresponsible and
makes what he says and does so inaccurrate and confused
as to be in the last analysis " all one."

(Herr Duehring remarks, " How comical for example
is the declaration based upon Hegel's confused notions
that quantity becomes lost in quality and that money
advanced [i. e. for productive purposes. Ed.] becomes
capital whefi it reaches a certain limit merely through
quantitative increase." To which Engels replies thus) :

This seems peculiar when presented in this washed
out fashion by Herr Duehring. On page 313 (2nd ed.
" Capital ") Marx, after an investigation of fixed and
variable capital and surplus value, derives from his in-
vestigations the conclusion that "' not every amount of
gold or value capable of being transformed into capital is
so transformed ; rather a certain minimum of gold or of
exchange value is presupposed to be in the possession of
the individual owner of gold or goods." He thereupon
gives an example, thus, in a branch of industry the
worker works eight hours per day for himself, i. e. in
order to produce the value of his wages, and the follow-

THE DIALECTIC 155

ing four hours for the capitahst in producing surplus
value to go into their pockets. One must have sufficient
values to permit of the setting up of two workmen
with raw material, means of labor and wages, in order
to live as well as a workman. But since capitalistic
production is not undertaken for mere livelihood but for
increase of wealth, our individual with his two work-
men would still be no capitalist. If he lives twice as
well as an ordinary workman and transforms half of
the surplus value produced into capital he will have to
cniplo}- eiglit workmen and possess four times the afore-
mentioned amouiit of value, and only after this and
other examples for the purpose of illustrating and estab-
lishing the fact that not every small amount of value
can effect a transformation of itself into capital, but that
each period of industrial development and each branch of
industry has its own minimum, fixed, Marx remarks
" Here, as in nature, the correctness of the law of logic,
as discovered by Hegel, is established — that mere quan-
titative changes at a certain point suddenly take on quali-
tative differences."

One may remark the elevated and dignified fashion in
which Duehring makes Marx say the exact opposite of
what he did say. Marx says " The fact that a given
amount of value can only transform itself into capital
as soon as it has attained a definite minimum, varying
with circumstances, in each individual case, — this fact
is proof of the correctness of the law of Hegel. Herr
Duehring makes him say " Because, according to the law
of Hegel, quantity is transformed into quality therefore
' a sum of money when it has reached a certain amount
becomes capital.' He says just the opposite.

We have seen above in the Scheme of the Universe
that Herr Duehring bad the misfortune to acknowledge

156 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

and apply, in a weak moment, this Hegelian system of
calculation, according to which at a given point quantita-
tive changes suddenly become qualitative. We then
gave one of the best known examples, that of the trans-
formation of the form of water which at 0° C. changes
from a liquid to solid and at 100° C. from liquid to gas-
eous, where thus at both these points of departure a mere
quantitative change in temperature produces a qualita-
tive change in the water.

We might have cited from nature- and human society
a hundred more such facts in proof of this law, thus the
whole fourth section of Marx's " Capital " entitled " Pro-
duction of Relative Surplus Value in the realm of co-
operative industry, the Division of Labor, and Manu-
facture, Machinery and the Great Industry," goes to
show innumerable instances in which qualitative change
alters the quantity of the thing, and where also, to use
Herr Duehring's exceedingly odious expression, quantity
is converted and transformed into quality. So also the
mere cooperation of large numbers, the melting of sev-
eral diverse crafts into one united craft, to use Marx's
expression, produces a new " industrial power " which,
is substantially different from the sum of the individual
crafts.

Marx, in the interest of the entire truth, has remarked,
in complete contrast to the perverted style of Herr Dueh-
ring " The molecular theory employed in modern chem-
istry, first scientifically developed by Laurent and Ger-
hardt, rests upon no other law. But what does Herr
Duehring care for that ? He knows that " the eminently
modern constructive elements of scientific thought make
just the same mistake as was made by Marx and his
rival Lassalle ;> half-knowledge and a touch of pseudo-
philosophy furnish the tools necessary for a display of

THE DIALECTIC ^ 157

learning." While with Herr Duehring "elevated no-
tions of exact knowledge in mechanics, physics and
chemistry " are, as we have seen, the foundations. But
that the public may be in a position to decide we shall
examine somewhat more closely the example cited by
Marx in his note.

Here we have, for example, the homologous series of
compounds of carbon of which many are known and each
has its own algebraic formula. If we, for example, ac-
cording to the practice of chemistry, represent an atom of
carbon by C, an atom of hydrogen by H, an atom of
oxygen by O and the number of atoms contained in each
combination of carbon by n, we can express the molecular
formula of each one of this series thus,

C'H^* + 2 — Series of normal paraffin.

C«H2> + 20 — Series of primary alcohol.

C-Hj'Og — Series of the monobasic oleic acids.

Let us take, for example, the last of this series and set
one after the other n = 1, n = 2, etc., we get the follow-
ing results omitting the compounds.

CHaOj — Formic Acid — boiling point 100° — melting
point 1°.

CjH^Oj — Acetic Acid — boiling point 118° — melting
point 17°.

CjHoOj — Propionic Acid — boiling point 140° — melt-
ing point — .

CiHgOa — Butyric Acid — boiling point 162° — melt-
ing point — .

CjHjoOj — Valerianic Acid — boiling point 175° —
melting point — .

'And so on to CsoHjoOj, Melissic Acid, which melts
first at 180°, and which has no boiling point, because it
does not evaporate without splitting up.

Here we see therefore a whole series of qualitatively

158 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIAMSM

different bodies, produced by single- quantitative addi-
tions of the elements and always in the same propor-
tions. This occurs absolutely where all elements of the
combinations change their quantity in the same propor-
tions, so with normal paraffin, C«H„»-|- 2 : the lowest is
CH4 a gas, the highest known is CieHj^, a body forming
a hard colorless crystal which melts at 21° and boils at
278°. In both the series each new step is reached
through the introduction of CH2, an atom of carbon and
two atoms of hydrogen, to the molecular form of the pre-
ceding step, and this quantitative change in the molecu-
lar form brings about a qualitatively different body.

These series are merely obvious examples. Almost
universally in chemistry, particularly in the different
oxides of nitrogen^ in the oxi-acids of phosphorus or
sulphur, one can see how " quantity suddenly changes ^
into quality " and how this so called " confused Hegelian-
ism " is, so to speak, inherent in things and events, and
no one is ever confused or beclouded by it, except Herr
Duehring. If Marx is the first to observe this, and if
Herr Duehring points this out, without understanding it
(since he could not let so unheard of a crime pass), he
should explain which of the two, Marx or Duehring, is
without elementary conceptions of natural science and
the established principles of chemistry, and do it without
boasting about his own ideas on natural philosophy.

In conclusion, let us call attention to a witness on the
change of quantity into quality, namely Napoleon. He
describes the conflicts between the French cavalry, bad
riders but disciplined, with the Mamelukes who, as re-
gards single combat were better horsemen but undis-
ciplined, as follows — Two Mamelukes were a match for
three Frenchmen, one hundred Mamelukes were equal
to one hundred Frenchmen, three hundred Frenchmen

THE DIALECTIC 1 59

could beat three hundred Mamelukes and a thousand
Frenchmen invariably defeated fifteen hundred Mame-
lukes." Just as in the statement of Marx, that a certain
amount of money, variable in amount, is necessary as a
minimum, to make its transformation into capital possi-
ble, so, according to Napoleon, a certain minimum num-
ber of cavalrxmen is required to bring into being the
force of discipline inherent in military org'anisation, to
make them evidently superior to greater numbers of in-
dividually better riders and fighters, cavalry at least as
brave, though irregular. But what effect has this argu-
ment on Herr Duehring? Was not Napoleon utterly
defeated in his conflict with Europe? Did he not suffer
defeat after defeat? And why? Simply as a result of
his introduction of confused Hegelian ideas into cavalry
tactics.

Negation of the Negation

" The historical sketch (of the so called original ac-
cumulation of capital in England) is comparatively the
best part of Marx's book and it would be even better if
it had been developed scientifically and not by means
of the Dialectic. The Hegelian negation of the negation
is called upon to serve here as a midwife, in default of
anything better and clearer, and by means of it the fu-
ture is brought into existence from the present. The
abolition of privatis property which is shown to have
been going on since the sixteenth century is the first
negation. Another negation must follow which is char-
acterised as the negation of the negation and therefore
the restoration of individual private property, but in a
higher form, founded on the common ownership of land
and instruments of labor. If this new ' individual pri-
vate property ' is called also ' social property ' by Herr

l6o LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

Marx, the higher Hegelian unity is here manifested in
which the contradiction will be destroyed, that is, in ac-
cordance with this juggling of words, be destroyed and
preserved. . . . The dispossession of the dispos-
sessor is, as it were, in this case the automatic product
of historical reality in its material external form. . . .
It would be difficult for a cautious man to convince him-
self of the necessity of communism in land and property
on the credit of Hegel's shiftiness, of which the negation
of the negation is an example. . . . The confusion
of the Marxian philosophic notions will not be strange
to him who knows what can be done by means of the
Hegelian dialectic or rather what cannot be done. For
those who do not know the trick, it must be noted that
the first negation of Hegel is the teaching of the cate-
chism with respect to the Fall, and the second is a
higher unity leading to the Redemption. On these anal-
ogies, which pertain to religion no logic of facts can be
established. . . . Herr Marx consoles himself in the
midst of his simultaneously individual and social prop-
erty and leaves his disciples to solve his profound dia-
lectic puzzle." Thus far flerr Duehring is quoted.)

So Marx cannot prove the necessity of the social revo-
lution, the restoration of a common property in land
and the means of production, except by a reliance upon
Hegel's negation of the negation. And, since he founds
his socialistic theories upon analogies pertaining to re-
ligion, he comes to the conclusion that in future society
a simultaneously individual and social property will pre-
vail, as the Hegelian higher unity of the contradiction
destroyed.

Let us leave the negation of the negation for a little
and look at " the coexistent individual and social prop-
erty." This will be called by Herr Duehring a " cloud

THE DIALECTIC l6l

realm," and, strange to say he is really right in this re-
gard. But sad to say it is not Marx who is found to be
in the cloud realm but on the contrary Herr Duehring
himself. Since by virtue of his wonderful versatility in
the vagaries of Hegel he does not experience any diffi-
culty in telling us' the necessary contents of the as yet
unpublished volume of " Capital," so, after setting Hegel
right, he is able to correct Marx without any trouble in
that he ascribes to him a higher unity of a private prop-
erty of which Marx has not said a word.

Marx says " It is the negation of the negation. This
reestablishes private property but on the basis of the
acquisitions of the capitalistic era, of the cooperation of
free laborers and their common ownership of the land
and the means of production. The transformation of the
private property of individuals, depending upon the la-
bor of individuals, into capitalistic property is naturally
a process much more tedious, hard and difficult than the
transformation of capitalistic private property, as it now
exists, resting upon social production, into social prop-
erty." That is all. The condition attained by the dis-
possession of the dispossessor is here shown as the resto-
ration of individual private property resting however on
a basis of social property in the land and means of pro-
duction. For people who can understand English, the
meaning of this is that social property extends to the
land and means of production, and private property to
the products, therefore to consumption. And that the
matter should be evident even to infants Marx shows on
page 56. " A society of free men who labor with social
means of production, and consciously expend their in-
dividual, labor power as social labor power," therefore
a socialistically organised society, and he says further
" The total product of the society is a social product.

l62 LANDMARKS OF SCIEI^TIFIC SOCIALISM

A portion of this product serves again as a means of
production. It remains social. But another portion is
consumed by the members of the society. It must there-
fore be distributed among them." And that ought to be
clear, even to Herr Duehring, in spite of his having
Hegel on the brain. The coexistent individual and social
property, this confused and indefinite thing, this non-
sense proceeding from the Hegelian dialectic, this misty
world, this deep dialectic puzzle which Marx leaves his
pupils to solve is merely a creation of Herr Duehring's
imagination. Marx, as. a so-called Hegelian, is obliged,
as a result of the negation of the negation, to furnish
a correct higher unity, and since he does not do this
in accordance with the taste of Herr Duehring, the lat-
ter has to take a lofty stand and to smite Marx in the
interests of the full truth of things upon which Herr
Duehring holds a patent.

What attitude did Marx take to the negation of the
negation ? On page 761 and following he states the con-
clusion with respect to his economic and historical in-
vestigations into the so-called accumulation of original
capital, extending over the fifty preceding pages. Be-
fore the capitalistic era in England, at least, small pro-
duction existed, based upon the private property of the
worker in his tools. The so called accumulation of cap-
ital consists in the expropriation of these immediate pro-
ducers, that is in the abolition of private property rest-
ing on the labor of individuals. This was possible be-
cause the aforesaid small production is only compatible
with a narrow and primitive stage of production and of
society and at a certain grade of development furnishes!
the means of its own suicide. This suicide, the trans-
formation of individual and divided modes of produc-
tion into social production, constitutes the early history

THE DIALECTIC 163

of capitalism. As soon as the workers are transformed
into proletarians and their means of labor into capital,
as soon as the capitalistic methods of production are
firmly established, the growing association of labor and
the further transformation of the land and other means
of production and hence the further expropriation of
the owners of private property takes on a new form,
" there is no longer the self-employing worker to expro-
priate, but the capitalist who expropriates many workers.
This expropriation fulfils itself through the play of laws
immanent in capitalistic production itself, through the
concentration of capital. One capitalist kills many.
Hand in hand with this concentration, or the expropria-
tion of many capitalists by a few, there develop con-
tinually the conscious technical application of science,
the deliberate organised exploitation of the soil, the
transformation of the instruments of labor into instru-
ments of labor which can only be employed collectively,
and the economising of all means of production through
their employment as the common means of production of
combined social labor. With the constantly diminishing
numbers of capitalist magnates who usurp and monopo-
lise all the advantages of this process of transformation,
grows the mass of misery, pressure, slavery, degradation
and robbery but there grows also revolt and the con-
stant progress in union and organisation of the working
class brought about through the mechanism of the capi-
talistic process of production. Capitalism becomes an
impediment to the methods of production developed with
and under it.i*> The concentration of the means of pro-
duction and the organisation of labor reach a point where
it comes into collision with its capitalistic covering. It
is broken. The hour of capitalistic private property
strikes. The expropriators are expropriated."

164 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

And now I ask the reader, where are the dialectic
twists and twirls, the intellectual arabesques, where the
confused thought the i^esult of which is the identity of
everything,- where thp dialectic mystery for the faithful,
where the dialectic hocus pocus, and the Hegelian in-
tricacies, without which, Marx, according to Ilerr Dueh-
ring, cannot develop his own ideas? Marx simply
pointed to history and showed briefly that just as the
small industry necessarily produced the conditions of its
own downfall, by its own development, that is to say by
the expropriation of the small holders of private property
so novv the capitalistic method of production has itself
developed likewise the material circumstances which
must cause its downfall. The process is a historical one
and, if it is at the same time dialectic, it is not to the dis-
credit of Marx, that it happens to be so fatal to Herr
Duehring. '

In the first place, since Marx is ready with his his-
torical economic proof, he proceeds " The capitalistic
method of production and method of appropriation, that
is to say capitalistic private property is the first negation
of individual private property founded on labor of in-
dividuals, the negation of capitalistic production will be
self-produced with the necessity of a natural process, etc.
(as quoted above).

Although Marx therefore shows the occurrence of this
event as negation of the negation, he has no intention of
proving by this means that it is a historical necessity.
On the contrary " After he has shown that the actual
fact has partially declared itself, and has, as yet partially
to declare itself, he shows it also as a fact which ful-
fils itself in accordance with a certain dialectic law,
That is all. It is therefore again merely supposition on
Herr Duehring's part to assert that the negation of the

THE DIALECTIC I65

negation must act as a midwife by whose means the fu-
ture is brought out of the womb of the present, or that
Marx wants to convince anyone of the necessity of social
ownership of land and capital upon the credit of the
negation of the negation.

It shows a complete lack of comprehension of the na-
ture of the dialectic to regard it as Herr Duehring does,
as an instrument of mere proof, just as one can after a
limited fashion employ formal logic or elementary mathe-
matics. Formal logic is itself more than anything else
a method for the discovery of new results, for advancitig
from the known to the unknown, and so, but in a much
more distinguished sense, is the dialectic, which, since
it transcends the narrow limits of formal logic, attains
a more comprehensive philosophical position. It is the
same with mathematics. Elementary mathematics, the
mathematics of constant quantities, proceeds within the
limits of formal logic, at least as a rule : the mathematics
of variable quantities which is peculiarly concerned with
calculations running to the infinite, is substantially noth-
ing but the application of the dialectic in mathematics.
Mere proof becomes secondary before the manifold ap-
plication of the method to new fields of investigation.
But nearly all the proofs of higher mathematics from
the first of the diflferential calculus, are, strictly speaking,
false from the standpoint of elementary mathematics.
This cannot be otherwise, if one, as is here the case,
wishes to establish results woq in the realrii of dialectics
by means of formal logic. For a crass metaphysician
like Herr Duehring to want to prove anything by means
of the dialectic would be the same wasted labor as Leib-
nitz and his pupils went through when they tried to
establish the thesis of calculation to infinitv bv means

l66 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

of the mathematics of their time. The differential gave
them the same spasms as the negation of the negation
gives Herr Duehring and it played a role in it as we
shall see. They admitted it at last, at least as many as
did not die first, not because they were convinced but
because it always worked out right. Herr Duehring, is,
as he says, just in his forties, and if he attains old age,
as we hope he will, he may also experience the same.

But what is this dreadful negation of the negation
which makes life so bitter to Herr Duehring and which
is to him what the unpardonable sin, the sin against the
Holy Ghost, is to Christianity? It is a very simple pro-
cess, and one, moreover, which fulfils itself every day,
which any child can understand when it is deprived of
mystery, under which the old idealistic philosophy found
a refuge, and beneath which it will pay unprdtected meta-
physicians to take refuge from the stroke of Herr Dueh-
ring. Let us take a grain of barley. Millions of such
grains of barley will be ground, cooked and brewed and
then consumed. But let such a grain of barley fall on
suitable soil under normal conditions ; a complete individ-
ual change at once takes place in it under the influence
of heat and moisture, it germinates. The grain, as such
disappears, is negated, in its place arises the plant, the
negation of the grain. But what is the normal course
of life of this plant? It grows, blossoms, bears fruit and
finally produces other grains of barley and as soon as
these are ripe the stalk dies, and becomes negated in its
turn. As the result of this negation of the negation,
we have the original grains of barley again, not singly,
however, but ten, twenty or thirty fold. Forms of grain
change very slowly and so the grain of barley remains
practically the same as a hundred years ago. But- let
i}s take a cultivated ornamental plant, like the dahlia or

THE DIALECTIC I67

orchid. Let us consider the seed and the plants de-
veloped from it by the skill of the gardener, and we have
in testimony of this negation of the negation, no longer
the same seeds but qualitatively improved seed which
produces more beautiful flowers, and every repetition of
this process, every new negation of the negation, in-
creases the tendency to perfection. Similarly this process
is gone through by most insects, butterflies, for ex-
ample. They come out of the egg by a negation of the
egg, they go through certain transformations till they
reach sex maturity, they copulate and are again negated,
since they'die as soon as the process of copulation is com-
pleted, and the female has laid her innumerable eggs.
That the matter is not so plainly obvious in the case of
other plants and animals, seeing that they produce seeds,
plants, and animals not once but oftener, does not affect
us in this case, we are now only concerned in showing
that the negation of the negation actually does occur in
both kingdoms of the organic world. Besides, all geol-
og>' is a series of negated negations, one layer after an-
other following the destruction of old and the establish-
ment of new rock foundations. First, the original crust
of the earth, through the cooling of the fluid mass, and
through oceanic, meteorological, and chemical atmos-
pheric action, being broken up into small parts, these
broken masses form layers in the seas. Local elevations
of the seas, through the ebb and flow of the waters,
bring portions of these layers afresh under the influence
of rain, the warmth of the seasons, and the oxygen and
carbon in the atmosphere : melted and almost cooled
masses of rock from the interior of the earth underlie
these and break through the layers. Through millions
of centuries new layers are continually being formed,
always to a large extent destroyed and serving again as

l68 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

building materials for new layers. But the result of the
process is always positive, the restoration of a piece of
ground made up of exceedingly diverse chemical elements
to a condition of mechanical pulverisation, which is the
cause of a most abundant and diverse vegetation.

It is the same also in mathematics. Let us take an
ordinary algebraic quantity a. Let us negate it, then we
have — a (minus a). Let us negate this negation, that
is let us multiply — a by — a and we have + a^ that is
the original positive quantity but in a higher form that
is to the second power. It does not matter that we can
attain the sanie a^ by the multiplication of a positive by
itself. The negated negation is established so completely'
in a^ that under all circumstances it has two square roots
a and — a. And this impossibility, the negated nega-
tion, the getting rid of the negative root in the square
has much significance in quadratic equations. The ne-
gation of the negation is more evident in the higher
analyses, in those " unlimited summations of small quan-
tities," which Herr Duehring himself explains as being
the highest operations of mathematics and which are
usually called the differential and integral calculus. How
do these forms of calculation fulfil themselves? I have
for example in a given problem two variable quantities
X and y, of which one cannot vary without causing the
other to vary also under fixed conditions. I differen-
tiate X and y, that is I consider x and y as being so in-
finitesimally small, that they do not represent any real
quantities, even the smallest, so that, of x and y, nothing
remains, except their reciprocal relations, a quantitative

dx
relation without any quantity ; therefore — , the relation

dy

THE DIALECTIC ' 169

O O

of the two differentials of x and y, is — *- but — is fixed as

O O

y

the expression of — . That this relation between two

X

vanished quantities, the fixed moment of their vanishing,
is a contradiction I merely mention in passing, it should
give us as little uneasiness as it has given mathematics
for the two hundred or so years past. What have I done
except to negate x and y ; not as in metaphysics so as
not to trouble myself any further about them, .but in a
manner demanded by the problem? Instead of x and y,
I have therefore their negation dx and dy in the formulae
or equations before me. I now calculate further with
these formulae. I treat dx and dy as real quantities, as
quantities subject to certain exceptional laws, and at a
certain point I negate the negation, that is, I integrate
the differential formula. I get instead of dx and dy
the real quantifies x and y again, and am thereby no
further forward than at the beginning, but I have thereby
solved the problem over which ordinary geometry and
algebra would probably have gnashed their teefh in vain.
It is not otherwise in history. All civilised peoples
began with common property in land. Among all peo-
ples which pass beyond a certain primitive stage the com-
mon property in land becomes a fetter upon production in
the process of agricultural development. It is cast aside,
negated, and, after shorter or longer intervening periods,
is transformed into private property. But at a higher
stage, through the development still further of agricul-
ture, private property becomes in its turn a bar to pro-
duction, as is to-day the case with both large and small
land proprietorship. The next step, to negate it in turn,

170 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

to transform it into social property, necessarily follows.
This advance however does not signify the restoration
of the old primitive common property, but the establish-
ment of a far higher better developed form of communal
proprietorship, which, far from being an impediment to
production, rather, for the first time is bound to put an
end to its limitations and to give it the full benefit of
modern discoveries in chemistry and mechanical inven-
tions.

But again ; ancient philosophy was primitive naturalis-
tic materialism. In the state of thought at that period it
was, as such, incapable of clear conceptions of matter.
But the necessity of clearness on this point led to the
doctrine of a soul which could leave the body, then to the
idea of the immortality of the soul, finally, to monotheism.
The old materialism was therefore negated by idealism.
But in the further development of philosophy idealism
became untenable, and is negated by modern materialism.
This, the negation of negation, is not the mere reestab-
lishment of the old, but unites, with the surviving founda-
tions, the whole thought content of a two thousand years'
development of philosophy and science, as well as the
history of these two thousand years. It is in a Special
sense no philosophy but a single concept of the universe
which has to prove and realise itself not in a science of
sciences apart, but in actual science. Philosophy is here
also cast aside, that is " destroyed and preserved," de-
stroyed as to its form, preserved as to its real content.
Where Herr Duehring only sees word-fugglery a more
real content is brought to light by the newer poiht of
view.

Finally, even the Rousseau doctrine of equality, of
which that of Herr Duehring is only a feeble and false
plagiarism, has no existenoe unless the Hegelian nega-

THE DIALECTIC I7I

tion of the negation serve it is a midwife, although it
originated twehty years prior to the birth of Hegel. Far
from being ashamed of this it bears in plain sight the
stamp of its dialectic derivation in its earliest manifesta-
tion. In a state of nature and savagery men were equal,
and, since Rousseau regards speech as a falsifyitig of
natural conditions, he is quite right in predicating equal-
ity of animals of one species as far as this reaches, and
the same also with regard to those speechless animal-
men, recently Hypothetically classified by Haeckel as
Alali. But these equal animal men had one quality be-
yond the other animals, — perfectibility, the power of
further development and this was the reason of inequal-
ity. Rousseau sees therefore in the existence of equality
a step forward. But this advance was self contradictory,
it was at the same time a retrogression. " All further
advances (beyond the primitive stage) were so many
steps, seemingly in the development of individual men,
but actually in the decay of the species. Working in
metals and agriculture were the two arts whose discov-
ery brought about this great revolution " (the transfor-
mation of the primitive forests into cultivated lands, but
also the introduction of poverty and slavery together
with private property). "The poets hold that gold and
silver, the philosophers that iron and corn have civilised
men and ruined the human race." Each new advance of
civilisation is at the same time an advance of inequality.
All contrivances with which society endows itself by
means of civilisation are in direct opposition to their
original purpose. " It is beyond question and a founda-
tion principle of the entire public law that people made
rulers to defend their liberties, not to destroy them."
And yet these rulers become of necessity the oppressors
of the people and they carry the oppression to the point

172 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

where inequality is brought to a climax and, then, trans-
formed into'its opposite, again becomes the reason of
equality, for to despots all are equal, that is equally of no
account. Here is die extreme of inequality, the crown-
ing point which closes the circle, and touches the point
from which we have proceeded; here all private individ-
uals are equal, since they are of no account, and subjects
have no law other |than the will of their master. " But
the despot is master only as long as he has the power,
and for this reason he cannot complain of the use of
force if he is banished. . . . Force upholds him,
force throws him down, everything goes according to a
straight and naturally appointed path." And thus again
inequality is transformed into equality, but not into the
old materialistic equality of speechless, primitive men,
but into the higher equality of organised society. The
oppressor is oppressed, it is negation of the negation.

We have then, as regards Rousseau, not merely a
method of thought which is quite analogous to that pur-
sued in Marx's " Capital," but also a whole series of sin-
gle dialectic turns of which Marx avails himself : Proc-
esses, which are antagonistic in their nature, containing
a contradiction in themselves, are transformed frofti one
extreme to its opposite, finally, as the quintessence of the
whole, negation of the negation. Although Rousseau in
1754 could not speak the jargon of Hegel, he was then,
at a period twenty-three years before the birth of H?gel,
deeply infected with the Hegel contagion, the dialectic
of contradiction, doctrine of logic, theology, etc. And
if Duehring in his misapplication of Rousseau's theory
of equality, operates with his two victorious men. he
having lost his feet, falls, of necessity into the arms of
the negation of the negation.

The conditions under which the equality of the two

THE DIALECTIC 173

men flourishes and which is set forth as an ideal con-
dition is shown on page 271 of the Philosophy as the orig-
inal condition. This original condition on page 279 is
of necessity destroyed by the " robber system " — first ne-
gation. But we have now, thanks to the philosophy of
reality, a!rrived at the point of abolishing the " robber
system " and substituting for it the economic commune
discovered by Herr Duehring — negation of the nega-
tion, equality on a higher plane.

What is the negation of the negation, therefore? It
is a very far reaching, and, just, for this reason, a very
important law of development of nature, human history
and thought, a law which we see realised in the animal
and vegetable kingdoms, in geology, in mathematics, in
history, and philosophy, and which Herr Duehring him-
self, in spite of his opposition and resistance, must fol-
low, after his own fashion. It is evident that I say noth-
ing of the special development of the grain of barley
from the germ to the crop bearing plant, if I say it is
negation of the negation. Since the integral calculus is
likewise negation of the negation, with the other assertion
I should only affirm that the life process of a grain of
barley is integral calculus or even socialism. But that is
just the kind of thing which the metaphysicians push off
on the dialectic. If I say that all these processes consti-
tute negation of the negation, I embrace them all under
this one law of progress, and leave the distinctive features
of each special process without particular notice. The
dialectic is, as a matter of fact, nothing but the science of
the universal laws of motion, and evolution in nature,
human society and thought.

At this point, however, the objection may be urged that
the final negation is no true negation, I negate a grain
or barley also when I grind it, an insect when I crush it, a

174 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

positive quantity when I eliminate it, etc. Or I negate
the statement " the rose is a rose " if I say " the rose is
no rose " and what happens if I negate this negation
again and say " but the rose is a rose " ? These objec-
tion are, in fact, the chief arguments of the metaphysi-
cians against the dialectic and are quite worthy of this
idiotic method of reasoning. To negate in the dialectic
is not simply to say " No," or to describe a thing as non-
existent, or to destroy it after any fashion that you may
choose. Spinoza says " omnis determinatio est negatio,"
every limitation or determination is at the same time a
negation. Furthermore, the sort of negation here is
shown first by means of the universal and in the second
place by means of the distinctive nature of the process.
I must not only negate but I must also restore the nega-
tion again. I must therefore so direct the first negation
that the second remains possible or shall be so. How?
Just according to the peculiar nature of each particular
case. I grind a grain of barley, I crush an insect, I
have certainly fulfilled the first act but have made the
second impossible. Every species of things has there-
fore its own peculiar properties to be negated in order
that a progression may proceed, and every species of
properties and ideas is precisely the same in this regard.
In infinitesimal calculations the negation is brought
about after a different fashion than in the restoration of
positive powers from negative roots. That has to be
learnt like everything else. With the mere knowledge
that the stalk of barley and infinitesimal calculation fall
under the principle of the negation of the negation, I
cannot cultivate more barley nor can I differentiate and
integrate, just as I cannot play the violin by virtue of
a mere knowledge of the laws of harmony. But it is
evident that a merely childish negation of the negation

THE DIALECTIC 175

such as writing down a and erasing it, or by affirming
that a rose is a rose and that it is not a rose leads to no
conclusion other than to show the silliness of the people
who undertake processes so tedious. And yet metaphy-
sicians would inform us that that is the right way to
carry out the negation of the negation.

Herr Duehring is therefore a mystifier when he asserts
that the negation of the negation was an analogy made
by Hegel derived from religion and built up on the story
of the Fall and the Redemption. Men thought dialec-
tically a long time before they knew what the dialectic
really was, just as they spoke prose a long time before
the term " prose " was used. The law of the negation of
the negation which operates in history and which until it
is once learned goes on in our brains unconsciously to
ourselves, was first clearly formulated by Hegel, and if
Herr Duehring desires to employ it in secret but cannot
stand the name, he should discover a better name. But
if he insist on expelling it from the processes of thought,
he must first be good enough to expel it from nature and
from history, and find a system of mathematics in which
— a multiplied by — a does not give us -)- a^ and where
the dififeren'tial and integral calculus are both forbidden
by law.

Conclusion

In this short section Engels leaves the general discus-
ion in order to again pay his respects to the shortcom-
ings and deficiencies of Herr Duehring. The matter pos-
sesses no general interest for Engels merely teases his
opponent upon the magnificence of his claims and the
slightness of his performances.

PART II
CHAPTER VIII

POLITICAL ECONOMY

/. Objects and Methods

Political economy is, in the widest sense, the science of
the laws controlling the production and exchange of the
material necessities of life in human society. Production
and exchange are two entirely different functions. Pro-
duction may exist without exchange, exchange — since
there can only be exchange of products — cannot exist
without production. Each of the two social functions is
controlled by entirely different external influences and
thus has, generally speaking, its own' peculiar laws. But
on the other hand they become so mutually involved at a
given time and react one upon the other that they might
be designated the abscisses and ordinates of the eco-
nomic curve.

The conditions under which men produce and ex-
change develop from land to land, and in the same land
from generation to generation. Political economy cannot
be the same fOr all lands and for all historical epochs.
From the bow and arrow, from the stone knife and the
exceptional and occasional trading intercourse of the
barbarian to the steam engine with its thousands of horse-
power, to the mechanical weaving machine, to the rail-
way and the Bank of England is a tremendous leap.
The Patagonians do not have production on a large scale
and world-commerce any more than they have swindling

176

, I^LITICAL ECONOMY 177

or bankruptcy. Anyone who should attempt to apply the
same laws of political economy to Patagonia as to pres-
ent-day England would only succeed in producing stupid
commonplaces. Political economy is thus really a his-
torical science. It is engaged with historical material,
that is, material which is always in course of develop-
ment. At the close of this investigation it can, for the
first time, shoyv the few (especially as regards produc-
tion and exchange) general laws which apply univer-
sally. In this way it is made evident that the laws which
are common to certain methods of production or forms
of -exchange are common to all historical periods in which
these methods of production and forms of exchange are
the same. Thus for example with the introduction of
specie, there came into being a series of laws which
holds good for all lands and historical epochs in which
specie is a means of exchange.

The method of distributing the product is in accord-
ance with the method of production and exchange of a
given society at a given time. In the tribal or village
community with comrpunal ownership of land, of which
there are obvious survivals in the history of all civilized
peoples, there is practically an equal distribution; where
a greater inequality of distribution of the product has
been introduced among the members of a society, it is a
sign of the coming dissolution of the community — large
and small farming have very different modes of distribu-
tion according to the historical circumstances from which
they have developed. But it is apparent that large farm-
ing requires a different mode of distribution than small
farming; that the large farming shows the existence of
class antagonism — slave-holders and slaves, landlords
and tenants, capitalists and wage workers, — but that, on
the contrary, in small farming, class distinction does not

1/8 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

arise from the farming operations of separate individua:ls
but from the mere beginnings of farming on a large
scale. The introduction and development of the use of
gold into a country where formerly exchange of actual
goods waa the exclusive or general practice, is closely
associated with a slow or rapid revolution of the mode
of distribution hitherto prevailing, and to such an ex-
tent that inequality of distribution among individuals
and, so, antagonism between rich and poor becomes more
and more apparent. Local gild hand-production as it
prevailed in the Middle Ages made great capitalists and
life-long wage-workers just as impossible as the great
modern industry, the credit system of to-day, atid form of
exchange, corresponding with the development of these,
free competition, render them inevitable.

With the difference in distribution however class differ-
ences are introduced. Society becomes divided into upper
and lower classes, into plunderers and plundered, into
master and servant classes, and the state which the orig-
inal groups composed of societies claiming the same an-
cestry only regarded as a means of protection of the
common interests (remnants of which remain in the
Orient, e. g.) and against foreign force, takes upon itself
the duty of maintaining the economic and political su-
premacy of the dominant class against the dominated
class by means of force.

So distribution is not a mere passive witness of pro-
duction and exchange; it has an immediate influence op
both. Every new method of production and form of ex-
change is impeded, not only through the old forms and
their particular forms of political development, but also
through the old methods of distribution. It can only
bring about its own method of distribution as the result
of long conflict. But just in proportion as a given

POLITICAL ECONOMY 179

method of production and exchange is built up and de-
velops, distribution all the more rapidly reaches a point
where it outstrips its predecessor and where it comes
into collision with the system of production and exchange
existing up to that time. The old tribal communistic
forms of which we have already spoken may last thou-
sands of years, as is seen in the case of the Indians and
Slavs of to-day, until intercourse with the outside world
develops causes of disruption within them as a conclu-
sion of which their dissolution comes about. Modern
capitalistic production on the other hand which is hardly
three hundred years old and which first became dominant
with the introduction of the greater industry about one
t U hundred years ago, has, in this short time, developed an-
tagonisms in distribution — concentration of capital on
the one hand in the possession of a few persons and, on
the other, concentration of propertyless masses in the
great cities — which must of necessity bring it to an end.
The connection between the form of distribution and
the material economic conditions of a society is so much
in the nature of things that it is generally reflected in the
popular instinct. As long as a method of production is
in the course of development, even those whose interests
are against it, who are getting the worst of the particular
method of production, are highly satisfied. It was just
so with the English working class at the introduction of
the greater industry. As long as this method of produc-
tion remained the normal social method, satisfaction with
the methods of distribution was, on the whole, prevalent ;
and when a protest against it rose even in the bosom of
the dominant class itself (Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen)
it found at first practically no sympathy among the
masses of the exploited. But directly the method of pro-
duction has travelled a good portion of its upward prog-

l8o 1 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM ,

ress, when half of its life was over, when its destinv
was in a great measure accomplished and its successor
was knocking at the door — then, for the first time the
ever increasingly unequal distribution appeared as un-
just. Then was the first appeal made from actual
facts to so-called eternal justice. This appeal to morality
and justice does not bring us a step further scientifically.
Economic science can find no grounds of proof in moral
indignation, however justifiable, but merely a symptom.
Its task is to show the newly developing social wrongs
as the necessary results of existing methods of produc-
tion and, at the same time, as signs of its approaching
dissolution, and to point oijt, amid the break up of the
existing economic system, the elements of the new or-
ganization of production and exchange which will abolish
those social wrongs. The feeling stirred up by the poets
whether in the picturing of these social wrongs or by
attack upon them or, on the other hand, by denial of
them and the glorification of harmony in the interests
of the dominant class, is quite timely, but its slight value .
as furnishing proof for a given period is shown by the
fact that one finds an abundance of it in every epoch.

Political economy, as the science of the conditions and
forms under which various human societies have pro-
duced and exchanged and according to which 'they have
distributed the products of their labor, — political econ-
omy, in this broad sense, has yet to be planned for the
first time. All that we have so far of political economic
science is almost entirely limited to the beginning and
development of the capitalistic mode of production. It
begins with the genesis and growth of the capitalistic
mode of production, and exchange, recognises tlie neces-
sity of the disappearance of these by means of tlie cap-
italistic forms, then develops the laws of the capitalistic

POLITICAL ECONOMY l8l

methods of production and their corresponding forms of
exchange on the positive side, that is on the side on which
they further the objects of society, as a whole and closes
with the socialist criticism of the capitalistic methods of
production, that is, with the exhibition of its laws on the
negative side, with the proof that this method of pro-
duction arrives at the point, by its own development,
where it is no longer possible. This criticism proves that
the capitalistic methods of production and exchange con-
stitute more and more an insufferable fetter upon pro-
duction itself. The mode of distribution which is' neces-
sarily, associated with this form of production has brought
about a class condition which grows daily more unberable.
It has produced the daily sharpening antagonism between
the continually less numerous but constantly richer capi-
talists and the more numerous, but on the whole, con-
tinually poorer propertyless wage-workers. Finally the
tremendous productive forces of the capitalistic methods
of production, which are practically unlimited, are only
awaiting their seizure at the hands of an organized co-
operative society to secure for all the members of that
society the means of existence and the fuller develop-
ment of their faculties in an ever increasing degree.

In order to fully accomplish this criticism of the bour-
geois economy acquaintance with the capitalistic form of
production of exchange and of distribution was not
enough. Preceding forms and others, existing side by
side with the capitalistic mode in a few highly developed
countries, had to be examined and compared at least in
their chief features. Such an investigation and com-
parision has been undertaken as a whole by Max alone
and we consider that this investigation practically sums
up all that has been established respecting theoretical
economy prior to that of the bourgeois.

l82 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

While political economy in a narrow sense arose in the
minds of a few geniuses of the seventeenth century, it is,
in its positive formulation by the physiocrats and Adam
Smith, substantially a child of the eighteenth century,
and expresses itself in the acquisitions of the great con-
temporary French philosophers with all the excellencies
and defects of that time. What we have said of the
French philosophers applies also to the economists of that
day. The new science was with them not the expression
of the condition and needs of the time but the expression
of eternal reason; the laws of production and exchange
discovered by them were not the laws of a given historical
form of those facts but were eternal natural laws ; they
derived them from the nature of man. But this man, seen
clearly, was a burgher of the Middle Ages on the high
road to becoming a modern bourgeois, and his nature con-
sisted in this that he had to manufacture commodities and
carry on bis trade according to the given historical con-
ditions of that period.

(Herr Duehring having applied the two mail theory
to political economic conditions and having decided that
such conditions are unjust, upon which conclusion he
bases his revolutionary attitude, Engels remarks as
follows) ;

" If we have no better security for the revolution in the
present methods of distribution of the products of labor
with all their crying antagonisms of misery and luxury,
of poverty and ostentation, than the consciousness that
this method of distribution is unjust and that justice must
finally prevail, we should be in evil plight and would have
to stay there a long time. The mystics of the Middle
Ages who dreamed of an approaching thousand years
kingdom of righteousness had the consciousness of the
injustice of class antagonisms. At the beginning of mod-

POLITICAL ECONOMY I83

em history three hundred years ago, Thomas Muenzer
shouted it aloud to all the world. In the English and
French bourgeois revolutions the same cry was heard
and died away ineffectually. And if the same cry, after
the formation of class antagonisms and class distinctions
left the working, suffering classes cold until 1830, if it
now takes hold of one land after another with the same re-
sults and the same intensity, in proportion as the greater
industry has developed in the individual countries if, in
one generation, it has acquired a force which defies
all the powers opposed to it and can be sure of
victory in the near future — how comes it about ? From
this, that the greater industry has created the modern
proletariat, a class, which for the first time in history can
set about the abolition not of this or that particular class
organization or of this or that particular class privilege
but of classes in general, and it is in the position that it
must carry out this line of action on the penalty of sink-
ing to the Chinese coolie level. And that the same greater
industry has on the other hand produced a class which is
in possession of all the tools of production and the means
of life but in every period of prosperity (Schwindelper-
iode) and in each succeeding panic shows that it is in-
capable of controlling in the future the growing produc-
tive forces; a class under whose leadership society runs
headlong to ruin like a locomotive whose closed safety
valve the engine driver is too weak to open. In other
words it has come about that the productive forces of the
modern capitalistic mode of production as well as the sys-
tem of distribution based upon it are in glaring contradic-
tion to the mode of production itself and to such a degree
that a revolution in the modes of production and distribu-
tion must take place which will abolish all class differences
or the whole of modern society will fall. It is in these

184 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

actual material facts, which are necessarily becoming more
and more evident to the exploited proletariat, that the con-
fidence in the victory of modern socialism finds its foun-
dation and not in this or that bookworm's notions of
justice and injustice.

//. The Force Theory.

(Herr Duehring argues that the causes of class sub-
jection are to be sought in political conditions and that
political force is the primary, a|nd economic conditions
merely the secondary, cause of class distinctions Engels
makes the following reply to these arguments) :

This is Herr Duehring's theory. It is set out, decreed
so to say, here and in several other placgs. But we can-
not find the slightest attempt to prove it or to disprove
the opposite theory in the three thick volumes. More-
over if there was an abundance of proof we should get
none from Herr Duehring, for the matter is proven by
the famous fall of man in that Robinson Crusoe made
Friday his slave. That was an act of force and so a
political act. And this slavery constitutes the point of
departure and fundamental fact of history up to the
present time and inoculates the heirs of sin with injustice
so certainly that only lately it has become milder and
" transformed into the more indirect forms Of economic
dependency." Since the whole of the remaining actual
" force-possession " rests upon this original enslavement,
it is clear that all economic phenomena can be explained
from original political causes, that is from force. And
whoever is not satisfied with this is a secret reactionary.
Let us first remark that one has to be as much in love
with himself as Herr Duehring is to consider this idea
as " original " since it is hot so by any means. The idea

.POLITICAL ECONOMY l8S

that the political doings of monarch and states are de-
cisive events in history is as old as the writing of history
itself and is the reason why we are so little aware of the
real and quietly developing progress of the peoples which
goes on behind these noisy and spectacular activities.
This idea has dominated the whole of history in the past
and got its first shock at the hands of the French bour-
■geois historians of the Restoration period.

To proceed, let us grant for the present that Herr
Duehring is correct when he says that all history up to
now has been the slavery of man by men, and we are
still a long way from the root of the matter. Let us ask
now how it was that Robinson came to enslave Friday.
Was it merely for the pleasure of doing so? Surely not.
On the contrary we are informed that Friday " was sub-
jugated as a slave or mere tool for economic service and
was kept in subjection merely as a tool." Robinson only
enslaved Friday that he might work for tlie benefit of
Robinson. And how could Robinson derive benefit from
the labor of Friday ? Only by virtue of the fact that Fri-
day produced more means of livelihood by his labor than
Robinson had to give him to keep him able to work.
Robinson has therefore, contrary to Herr Duehring's
pretty prescription, made, by the enslavement of Friday,
a political organization, not just because he wanted to,
but simply as a means of providing himself with food,
and he ought to see how little he has in common with his
lord and master Herr Duehring.

The childish example therefore which Herr Duehring
has discovered in order to show that force is the " his-
torical fundamental " proves that force is only a means
to further an economic interest, and in history the eco-_
nomic side is likewise more fundamental than the po-
litical. The example therefore" proves just the opposite

l86 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

of what it ought to prove. And, as with Robinson and
Friday, so it is also with all the examples of lordship and
slavery up to now. Slavery, to use Duehring's own
elegant expression, always implies a means for supplying
sustenance (using the term in its broadest sense) and
never merely implies a political organization which has
been developed by its own will. One would have to be a
Herr Duehring to venture to call taxes only a secondary-
feature of government, or, to say that the political group-
ings of the dominant bourgeois of to-day and the sub-
jugated proletariat are purely voluntary and not made to
serve the material interests of the bourgeois, namely
profit making and the accumulation of capital.

Let us give our attention again to our two men. Rob-
inson " sword in hand " makes Friday his slave. But to
do this Robinson uses something else besides his sword.
A slave is not made by that means solely. In order to be
able to keep a slave one has to be superior to him in two
respects, one must first have control over the tools and
objects of labor of the slave and over his means of sub-
sistence also. Therefore, before slavery is possible, a cer-
tain point in production has to be reached and a certain de-
gree of inequality in distribution attained. And when
slave labor becomes the dominant mode of production of
an entire society a higher development of the powers of
production, of trade and of wealth, accumulation occurs.
In early tribal communities which had common owner-
ship of the soil, slavery is either nonexistent or its role
is very subordinate. So it was at first in Rome, as a
state of farmers, but when Rome became the capital city
of the world and the soil of Italy came more and more
to be owned by a numerically small class of enormously
wealthy property owners, the population of framers per-
ished in front of the slave population. When at the

POLITICAL ECONOMY I87

time of the Persian War, the number of slaves in Corinth
was 460,000, and in ^gina 470,000, and there were ten
slaves to every freeman in the population, the explana-^
tion must be sought in something other than force ; there
were ^ highly developed art and handicraft and foreign
commerce. Slavery in the United States of America
was much less due to force than to the English cotton
industry ; where there was not cotton grown or where
slaves were not raised, as in the border states, for the
cotton producing states, it perished of its own accord
and without any employment of force simply because it
did not pay.

When Herr Duehring therefore calls the property of
the present day. property resting on force and designates
it as "that form of domination which does not. merely
signify the exclusion of one's fellow beings from the use
of the natural means of sustenance, but implies in ad- '
dition that the subjection of man has lain at the founda-
tion of human slavery " he puts the matter upside down.
The subjection of humanity to slavery in all its forms
means the control by the master of the means of labor by
virtue of which alone he can employ his slaves upon them
and the disposal of the means of livelihood by which he
can keep his slaves alive. In all cases therefore it im-
plies a certain power of possession which transcends the
ordinary? How did this arise? Occasionally it is clear
that it was seized and can therefore be said to rest upon
force but this is by no means essential. It can be got
by labor, be robbed, be obtained by trade, or taken by
fraud. It must be worked for generally before it can be
stolen.

Private property does not historically cqme into exist-
ence by any means as a rule as the product of robbery and
violence. On the contrary. It arises > from the Jimita-

l88 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

tion of certain things in the early tribal communes. It
develops in the first place within the tribe and aftei**-^^
wards in exchange with peoples outside of the tribe in'
the form of wares. In proportion as the products of the
tribe assume the form of commodities, i. e., the less they
are produced for the use of the producer and the more
for the purpose of exchange, the exchange destroys the
original form of distribution in the commune itself, and
the more unequal become the shares of the individual
members of the community with respect to material
possessionsr' So the old communal ownership of land be-
comes more and more invaded, the communal property
is rapidly converted into a village of farmers, each tilling
his own piece of ground'. Oriental despotism and the
changing government of conquering nomads had no power
to alter the old form of communal ownership for a thous-
and years.^ But the continual destruction of the primitive
domestic industry through the competition of the prod-
ucts of the great industry is bringing about its dissolu-
tion. The thing has little to do with force as has lately
appeared in the matter of the division of the communal
])rop.erty of the feudal societies on the Moselle and in
Ilochwald. The peasants are finding the substitution of
individual for communal holdings to their interests. Even
the growth of a primitive aristocracy as among the Celts,
the Germans, and in Mesopotamia, is a result of tlie com-
munal ownership of landed property, and does not de-
pend upon force in the slightest degree but upon free will
anc;! custom. Especially where private property arises
it "appears as the result of a change in the methods of
production and exchange in the interests of the increase
of production and the development of commerce and
therefore arises from economic causes. Force plays no
role in this.-' It is clear tbat the institution of private

fOLtXrCAf. ECONOMY 189

property must have already existed before the robber is
-able to possess himself of other people's goods and that
force may change the possession but cannot alter pri-
vate property as such.

But to explain the " subjection of men to slavery " in
its modern form, in wage-labor, we can make no use of
either force or property acquired by force. We have
already mentioned the part which the transformation of
the products of labor into commodities, their production
not for use alone, but for exchange, plays in the
destruction of the primitive communal property and
therefore in the bringing into existence directly or in-
directly the universality of private property. ' But Marx;
has proved in his " Capital " — and Herr Duehring does
not venture to intrude upon the matter — that at a certain
stage in economic development the production of
commodities is transformed into capitalistic production
and that at this point " the law of appropriation resting
upon the production and circulation of cominodities, the
law of private property, by its own inevitable diabetic
becomes changed into its opposite, the exchange of
equivalents, which appeared as ■ its original mode of
operation, but has now become so twisted that there is
only an appearance of exchange since. In the first place,
the portion of capital exchanged for labor-force is itself
only a portion of the product of another's labor taken
without an equivalent, and in the second place, it is not
only supplied by its producers, the workers, but it must
be supplied also with a new surpluS; Originally property
seemed to us to be established on labor only — property
now^appears (as a conclusion of the Marxian argument),
on the side of the capitalist, as the right to unpaid labor
and, on the side of the workingman, as an impossibility,
the ownership of his own product. The difference be-

igO LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

tween property and labor is the result of a law which ap-
parently proceeded from their identity." In other words
if we exclude the possibility of force, robbery, and cheat-
ing absolutely, if we take the position that all private
property originally depended upon the personal labor
of its possessor and that equivalents are always ex-
changed we nevertheless come, in the course of the de-
velopment of production and exchange, of necessity, to
the modern capitalistic methods of production, to the
monopolisation of the means of production and livelihood
in the hands of a single class few in numbers, to the
degradation of the other consisting of the immense ma-
jority of producers to the position of propertyless prol-
etarians, to the periodical alternations of swindling
operations and trade crises and to the whole of the pres-
ent anarchy in production. The entire result rests on
purely economic grounds without robbery, force, or any
intervention of politics or the government being neces-
sary. Property resting on force becomes a mere phrase
which merely serves to obscure the understanding of the
real development of things.

This course, historically expressed, is the story of the
development of the bourgeoisie. If " political conditions
are the decisive causes of economic conditions the modern
bourgeoisie would necessarily not have progressed as the
result of a fight with feudalism, but would be the darling
child of its womb. Everybody knows that the opposite
is the case. The bourgeoisie, originally bound to pay
feudal dues to the dominant feudal nobility, recruited
fi;om bond slaves and thralls, in a subject state, has, in
the course of its conflict with the nobility captured posi-
tion after position, and finally has come into possession
of the power in civilized countries. In France it directlv
attacked the nobility, in England it made the aristocracv

POLITICAL ECONOMY I9I

more and more bourgeois and finally incorporated it with
itself as a sort of ornament. And how did this come
about? Entirely through the transformation of economic
conditions which was sooner or later followed either by
the voluntary or compulsory transformation of political
conditions. The fight of the bourgeoisie against the
feudal nobility is the fight of the city against the coun-
try, of industry against landlordism, of economy based
on money against economy based on natural products.
The distinctive weapons of the bourgeois in this fight
were those which came into existence through the de-
velopment of increasing economic force by reason of the
growth at first of hand manufacture and afterwards
machine-manufacture and through the extension of
trade. During the whole of this conflict the political
power was in the hands of the nobility, with the excep-
tion of a period when the king employed the bourgeoisie
against the nobility in order to hold one in check by
means of the other. From the very moment, however, in
which the bourgeoisie still deprived of political power be-
gan to be dangerous because of the development of its
economic power the monarchy again turned to the nobility
and thereby brought about the revolution of the bour-
geois first in England and then in France. The political
conditions in France remained unaltered until the eco-
nomic conditions outgrew them. In politics the noble
was everything, the bourgeois nothing. As a social factor
the bourgeoisie was of the highest importance while the
nobility had abandoned all its social functions and yet
pocketed revenues, social services which it did not
any longer perform. Even this is not sufficient. Bour-
geois society was, as far as the whole matter of produc-
tion is concerned, tied and bound in the political feudal
forms of the Middle Ages, which this production, not

192 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

only as regards manufacture but as regards handwork
also had long transcended amid all the thousandfold
gild-privileges and local and provincial tax impositions
which had become mere obstacles and fetters to produc-
tion. The bourgeois revolution put an end to them.
But the economic condition did not, as Herr Duehring
would imply, forthwith adapt itself to the political cir-
cumstances, — that the king and the nobility spent a long
time in trying to effect — but it threw all the mouldy old
political rubbish aside and shaped new political condi-
tions in which the new economic conditions might come
into existence and develop. And it has developed splen-
didly in this suitable political and legal atmosphere, so
so splendidly that the bourgeoisie is now not very far
from the position which the nobility occupied in 1789.
It is becoming more and more not alone a social super-
fluity but a social impediment. It takes an ever di-
minishing part in the work of production and> becomes
more and more, as the noble did, a mere revenue con-
suming class. And this revolution in its position and
the creation of a new class, that of the proletariat, came
about without any forde-nonsense but by purely economic
means. Further more, it has by no means accomplished
it by its own willful act. On the other hand it has ac-
complished itself irresistibly against the wish and inten-
tions of the bourgeoisie. Its own productive forces have
taken the management of affairs and are driving modern
bourgeois society to the necessity of revolution or
destruction. And if the bourgeoise now appeals to force
to ward off the ruin arising from the decrepit economic
condition it proves thereby that it suffers from the same
error as Herr Duehring, in that it thinks that " political
conditions are the distinctive causes of economic condi-
tion " and that by the use of the prime factor of mere

POLITICAL ECONOMY 193

political force it can maunfacture the secondary factor
of economic conditions. It thinks that it can shape
economic conditions and their inevitable development,
and therefore eliminate the economic effects of the steam
engine, and the modern industry which has proceeded
from it. It thinks that it can abolish the world commerce
and the bank credit development of to-day from the
universe by means of Krupp guns and Mauser rifles.

///. Force Theory {Continued).

Let us look at this omnipotent " force " of Herr
Duehring a little more closely. Robinson enslaved Fri-
day " sword in hand." How did he get the sword? Rob-
inson's imaginary island never grew swords on trees and
some answer to this question is due from Herr Duehring.
We might just as well assume that as Robinson became
possessed of a sword so, one fine morning, Friday ap-
peared with a loaded revolver in his hand. Thereupon
the " force " is entirely reversed. Friday takes command
and Robinson must submit. We beg pardon of the
reader for returning to the story of Robinson Crusoe,
which is more appropriate to the nursery than to an eco-
nomic discussion, but what can we do about it? We are
compelled to pursue Herr Duehring's axiomatic scientific
methods and it is not our fault if we always find ourselves
in the realms of childishness. The revolver then triumphs
over the sword and it should be apparent even to the
maker of childish axioms that superior force is no mere
act of the will but requires very real preliminary con-
ditions for the carrying out of its purposes, especially
mechanical instruments, the more highly developed of
which have the superiority over the less highly developed.
Furthermore these tools must be produced, whence it
appears that the producer of the more highly developed

194 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

tool of force, commonly called weapon, triumphs over
the producer of the less highly develppei! tool." In a
word, the triumph of force depends upon the production
of weapons, therefore upon economic power, on economic
conditions, on the ability to organize actual material in-
struments.

Force at the present day implies the army and the navy,
and the two of them cost, to our sorrow, a heap of
money. But force cannot make money, on the contrary it
gets away very fast with what is made, and it does not
make good use of it as we have just discovered painfully
with respect to the French indemnity. Money must there-
fore finally be provided by means of economic production,
force is thus again limited by the economic conditions
which shape the means of making and maintaining the
instruments of production. But that is not all by any
means. Nothing is more dependent upon economic con-
ditions than armies and fleets. Arming, concentration,
organization, tactics, strategy, depend before anything
else upon the degree of development in production and
transportation. In the trade of war the free inventiy-
ness of liberal-minded generals has never worked a
revolution, but the discovery of better weapons and the
change in military equipment have never failed to do
so. The inventiveness of the general under the most
favorable conditions finds its limitations in the adapta-
tion of methods of warfare to the new weapons and the
new soldiers.

At the beginning of the fourteenth century gun-
powder was brought from the Arabs to Western Europe
and, as every schoolboy knows, entirely revolutionized
warfare. The introduction of gunpowder and firearms
was however by no means an act of force but an in-
dustrial and therefore economic advance. Industry is

POLITICAL ECONOMY IQS

Still industry whether its object in the creation or the
destruction of material things. The introduction of fire-
arms not only produced a revolution in the methods
of warfare but also in the relations of master and subject.
Trade and money are concomitants of giinpowder and
firearms and these former imply the bourgeoisie. Fire-
arms from the first were bourgeois instrum^ts of war-
fare employed on behalf of the rising monarchy against
the feudal nobility. The hitherto unassailable stone
castles of the nobles submitted to the cannon of the
burghers, the fire of their guns pierced the mail armor of
the knights. The supremacy of the nobility fell with the
heavily armed cavalry of the nobility. With the develop-
ment of the bourgeoisie, infantry and artillery became
more and more the important arms of the service and be-
cause of artillery the trade of war had to create another
industrial subdivision, to-wit, engineering.

The development of firearms proceeded very slowly.
Shooting remained clumsy and small arms were inef-
fective in spite of many individual inventions. Three
hundred years elapsed before a musket was produced
which sufficed for the arming of a complete infantry.
First at the beginning of the eighteenth century, a musket
with a bayonet iattached, which discharged a stone su-
perseded the pike as an infantry weapon. The infantry
of that day was exceedingly unreliable, only kept to-
gether by physical force, composed of the basest elements
of society, frequently made up of men picked up by the
press gang and prisoners of war intermingled with
soldiers recruited by the various princes. The only
fighting formation in which these soldiers could be made
to use the new weapon was the linear tactic, which
reached its highest development under Frederick II. The
whole infantrv of an army was drawn up in a very long

196 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

hollow square three files deep and advanced in battle array
en masse. It was usually permitted to one of the two
wings to be a little in advance or a little in the rear.
This helpless body could only advance and keep its
formation on perfectly level ground and then only at a
slow marching time (seventy-five steps to the minute) a
change of formation during"the fight was injpossible and
victory or defeat was determined rapidly at a stroke as
soon as the infantry came under fire.

These helpless lines in the American Revolutionary
War came into collision with the rebel troops, which cer-
tainly could not drill but could shoot so much the better
in that they were fighting for their own interests and
therefore did not desert like the enlisted soldiers. These
did not, like the English, deploy in massed bodies on the
open field, but in rapidly moving bodies of sharpshooters
in the thick woods. The organised lines were here pow-
erless and had to contend against invisible and unap-
proachable foes. The sharpshooters thereupon were
brought into existence as a part of the army organization
— a new method of fighting arising from a change in
the military material.

What the American Revolution began the French
completed in the military realm. To the drilled troops
of the Coalition the French Revolution opposed soldiers
who were badly drilled but who constituted large masses,
the product of the whole nation. Some means had to be
discovered of protecting Paris with these masses.
That could not be done without victory in the open
field. A mere musketry engagement would not suf-
fice, a form would have to be discovered by which
the masses could be utilized and this was found in the
column. The column formation allowed slightly drilled
troops to keep better order and by means of a better

POLITICAL ECONOMY I97

marching speed (one hundred steps to the minute) al-
lowed it to break through the stiff old-fashioned line ar-
rangement. It was possible by this formation to fight in
country unsuitable to the line formation, to mass troops in
places suitable, to associate scattered sharpshooters with
the columns, to keep back, occupy and wear the lines of
the enemy, until the decisive movement came when a
charge could "be made by the troops held in reserve. This
new method of combining riflemen and columns and mak-
ing a complete army corps consisting of all arms, which
was fully developed on its tactical and strategic side by
Napoleon, was only rendered possible by the change
in military material brought about by the French Revolu-
tion. There were still two very important technical pre-
liminaries, first the making of light carriages for field
pieces which were constructed by Gribevaul by means of
which alone the required quick advance was rendered
possible, and making the army rifle a more precise
weapon by adapting to it some of the features of the
hunting rifle. Without these improvements military
sharpshooting would have been impossible.

The revolutionary method of arming the entire popula-
tion was subjected to certain limitations and chiefly as
regards the excusing of the well to do, and in this form
became common to most of the great continental coun-
tries. Prussia alone sought by its militia system to make
the entire force of its people available for military pur-
poses. Prussia was the first state to provide its entire in-
fantry with the latest weapons, and to place officers in the
rear, since between 1830 and i860 trained officers leading
their troops had played an unimportant part. The results
of 1866 were largely due to these innovations.

In the Franco Prussian War two armies came into
contact both of which had their officers in the rear and

198 " LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

which both used substantially the same tactics as in the
time of the old smooth bore flintlocks. The Prussians
however by the introduction of company columns had
made an attempt to discover a method of fighting more
suitable to the new system of arming. But on the i8th
of August at St. Privat the Prussian guard which cm-
ployed the company column formation lost the most part
of five regiments, over a third of its strength in two
hours (176 officers and 5 114 men) after which the
company column form of battle order came in for no
less criticism than the battalion column form and the
line formation. Every attempt to oppose a solid forma-
tion to the fire of the enemy was thereafter abandoned.
The battle was thereafter, on the German side, carried
on by dense swarms of riflemen into which the columns
dissolved under the fire of the enemy spontaneously, with-
out orders from the superior "officers, and this was, in
fact, the only possible method of advance under fire. The
private soldier was again cleverer than his officer ; he had
discovered the only form of fighting formation, and set
himself to follow it in spite of the resistance of his
leaders.

In the Franco-German war there is a point of de-
parture of entirely different significance from all preced-
ing wars." In the first place the weapons are now so
complete that a new revolutionary departure in this re-
spect is no longer possible. When you have cannon with
which you can decimate a battalion as far as your eye
can make it out, and when you have rifles by which you
can aim at individuals, and which take less time to load
than to aim, all further advances as far as battle in the
field goes are immaterial. The era of progress on this
side is substantially closed. In the second place, how-
ever, this war has induced all the great states of the

POLITICAL ECONOMY 19')"

continent to adopt the highly developed Prussian militia
system and thus to take up a military burden which will
ruin them in a few years. The army has become the
main object of the state, it has become an object in itself.
The people only exist to furnish and maintain sol-
diers. Militarism dominates and devours Europe. But
this militarism has in it the seeds of its own destruction-.
The competition of the various states with each other
necessitates the spending of more money every year on
ihe army, the fleet, weapons of destruction, etc., and thus
accelerates financial breakdown. On the other hand, with
the increasingly rigid military service, the whole people
becomes familiar with the use of military weapons. It
therefore becomes able at some time to impose its wili
upon the dominating military authority. And this time
arrives as soon as the mass of the people — country and
:ity workers and farmers — has the will. At this point
the army of the classes becomes the army of the masses,
the machine refuses to do the work, militarism goe&
under in the dialectic of its own development. What the
bourgeois democrats of 1848 could not accomplish, just
because they were bourgeois and not proletarian, nameh
the endowment of the laboring masses with a will, the
content of which corresponded with their class condition,
socialism will certainly accomplish. And that means the
destruction of militarism and with it of all standing
armies absolutely and entirely.

That is the moral of our history of modern infantry.
The second moral which brings us back to Herr Duehring
is that the entire organization and methods of warfare
of modern armies and, with them, victory and defeat,
are dependent upon material things, that is upon eco-
nomic conditions, upon soldier material and upon weapon
material and therefore upon the quality of a population

200 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

and upon technique. Only a hunting people like tlie,
Americans could rediscover the sharpshooter. Now the
Yankees of the old States have, from purely economic
causes, become transformed into farmers, industrialists,
sailors and merchants, who no longer shoot in the pri-
meval forests and on that account have become all the
more successful in the field of speculation where they
have developed into colossal appropriators. Only a
Revolution like the French- which emancipated the
burghers and still more the peasants could discover the
simultaneously massed armies and free advance ^y which
they overcame the stiff old line formation, the military
product of the absolutism against which they fought.
And as for the advances in technique as soon as they
were applicable and were applied, forthwith changes, nay
revolutions, in the methods of warfare were at once
mide^ often against the will of the military leaders as we
have seen over and over again to be the case. A diU-
gent subaltern could explain to Herr Duehring how at
the present day the making of war is dependent upon the
productivity and means of communication of the back
country as well as of the theatre of war. In short, eco-
nomic conditions and means of power are always the
things which help " force " to victory, and without them
" force " comes to an end. So that he who would re-
form the art of war according to the axioms of Herr
Duehring would only get a flogging for his pains.

If we go from the land to the sea we shall discover a
complete revolution, even within the last twenty years.
The warship' of the Crimean War was the wooden three
decker, with from sixty to a hundred guns, which de-
pended upon its sailing power and had only a weak aux-
iliary steam engine. It carried in general thirty-two
pounders of about sixty hundred weight and only a few

POLITICAL ECONOMY 20I

sixty-eight pounders of ninety-five hundred weight. At
the end of the war ironclad floating batteries were used,
clumsy and slow but impregnable to the artillery of that
time. Very soon iron plates were placed on the war-
ships, at first thin, four inches thickness of iron was then
considered to constitute a remarkably great thickness.
But the progress in artillery soon discounted the thick-
ness of armour, for every addition to the armour there
was a new and more powerful artillery which pierced it
with the greatest ease. So now we have warships with
ten twelve, fourteen twenty-four inches of armour plate
(the Italians are going to build a warship with armour-
plate three feet thick) on the one hand and on the other
hand gxins which reach to a hundred tons and which
hurl projectiles amounting to two thousand pounds in
weight to unheard of distances. The modern war ves-
sel is a rapid travelling armoured screw steamer of eight
to ten thousand tons and of from six to eight thousand
horse power provided with turrets and four or six very
powerful big guns, together with a ram at the bow be-
low the water line for the purpose of destroying the ship
of the enemy. It is a colossal machine in which steam not
only furnishes the driving power but also steers, raises the
anchor, moves the towers, aims and loads the guns,
works the pumps, takes in and lowers the boats, which
are frequently steamers, and so forth. And the contest
between the armour plate and the projectile is so far
from having been settled that a ship is to-day practically
obsolete as soon as it has left the ways. The modern
warship is not only a product of modern industry but
a masterpiece, a product of the dissipation of wealth.
The country in which the greater industry has developed
the most completely has a monopoly of shipbuilding.
All the Turkish, almost all the Russian and the greater

202 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

part of the German warships are built in England. Ar-
mour plate of the best type is made almost exclusively in
Germany. Of the three iron foundries which are alone
in the position to turn out the heaviest artillery, two of
them, Woolwich and Elswick, are in England, the' third
Krupp's is in Germany. Here it may be seen that the
pure political power which Herr Duehring maintains to
be the original reason for economic conditions is on the
contrary inseparable from economic conditions and that
not only the existence but the very management of the
tool of force on the sea, the warship, is in itself a branch,
of modern industry. And that this is so gives nobody
more trouble than just that force, the state, which has
now to pay more for one ship than it had formerly for a
small fleet and sees that these exp^sive ships are obso-
lete as soon as they are launched. And the state is just
as much upset as Herr Duehring would be over the fact
that the controller of the economic force of the ship,
the engineer, is a much more important person than the
man of pure force, the captain. On the other hand we
have no further grounds for annoyance when we see
that how as a result of this contest between armour plate
and projectile the battle ship has arrived at the point
when it is as expensive as it is unfit for fighting and that
this contest shows the dialectic law of progress at work,
in naval warfare according to which militarism like every
other historical phenomenon must come to an end as a
result of its own development.

We can thus see as plain as noonday that it is not true
that " the original reason must be sought in pure political
force and not in indirect economic force." Quite the
contrary. Economic force is the control of the power of
the great industry. Political force in naval matters
which is dependent upon modern ships of war is by no

POLITICAL ECONOMY 203

means " pure force " but is involved in economic force,
m the advanced development of metallurgy, in the mas-
tery of historical technique and the possession of rich
coal-fields.

IV. Force Theory (Conclusion)

(Herr Duehring makes an argument which is briefly
summarised by Engels as follows and which may be said
to involve the notion that the monopolization of land is
the cause of human slavery and is the product of force.
Engels proceeds) :

Thesis — The domination of nature by man is the rea-
son of the domination of man by man.

Proof — The existence of landlordism on a large scale
cannot be carried on anywhere except by means of
slavery.

Proof of proof — Landlordism on a large scale can-
not exist without slavery because the great landlord with
his own family without the help of slaves can only culti-
vate a small piece of his property.

Therefore, in order to show that man cannot subdue
nature without the subjugation of his fellowman, Herr
Duehring transforms " nature " forthwith into " private
ownership of large tracts of land " and this indefinite pri-
vate ownership into the ownership exercised by a great
landlord, who naturally cannot cultivate his land without
slaves.

In the first place the domination of nature and the
cultivation of private landed property do not imply
the same thing. The domination of nature in industrial
affairs is displayed in a manner altogether different frotn
that in agricultural affairs, for these latter are always
at the mercy of the climate instead of being supreme over
the climate.

204 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

In the second place if we limit ourselves to the ex-
ploitation of private property in land in large amounts
we come to the question as to whom the land belongs^
We find that in the beginnings of civilised peoples the
land was not owned by great landlords but was held in
common by tribal and village communities. From India
to Ireland the exploitation of land property in large
tracts has proceeded from the tribal and village com-
munal ownership which was the original form. Some-
times the land was cultivated in common for the benefit
of the common members, sometimes in separate pieces,
parcelled by the community to separate families from
time to time with wood and willow land retained for
communal use.

It is pure imagination on the part of Herr Duehring
to declare that the exploitation of landed property is re-
sponsible for the existence of master and servant. Who
is the owner of private landed property in the entire
Orient wher? the land is possessed by the community or
the State and the word landlord is not to be found in
the language ? The Turks first introduced a species of
feudalism into the lands which they conquered. The
Greeks in heroic times had a classified system of rank
which itself bore witness to a long unknown preceding
history, but the land was then cultivated by an inde-
pendent peasantry. The large possessions of the nobles
and leaders of the tribes were the exception and had no
permanence. Italy was originally cultivated by small
peasant farmers; when in the latter days of the Roman
Republic the great holdings, the latifundia destroyed
the small farmer-holdings, cattle raising was substituted
for agriculture, and as Pliny points out Italy was ruined
{latifundia Italiam perdidere). In the whole of Europe
during the Middle Ages small farming was the rule and

POLITICAL ECONOMY 205

it is very appropriate to the above discussion to note what
tasks these peasant were obliged to perform for the feu-
dal lords. The Frisians, lower Saxons, Flemings and
people from the lower Rhine who invaded the lands of
the Slavs to the east of the Elbe and cultivated them
did so under very favorable terms of rent but by no
means under a species of slavery. In North America,
by far the greatest amount of tte land is cultivated by
the labor of free small farmers, while the great landed
proprietors of the South with their slaves and extravagant
farming methods destroyed the soil until the land ceased
to be productive and the cultivation of cotton travelled
ever Westward. , In Australia and New Zealand the
attempts to artificially establish an agrarian aristocracy
by the British government have failed. In short, if we
except the tropical and sub-tropical colonies, in which the
climate is prohibitive of agriculture by Europeans, it
seems that the idea of a great land holding class origi-
nally dominating nature by means of the employment of
slaves and serfs is a pure product of the imagination.
Things are quite otherwise. If one goes to the older
countries like Italy the land was not waste originally
but the transformation of the agricultural land cultivated
by the small farmers into cattle-land utterly ruined the
country.

Latterly, for the first time since the growth in the in-
tensity of the population has increased the value of land
and especially since the progress in agriculture has made
possible the reclamation of poor lands, the greater land-
fordism has begun to obtain possession of waste and pas-
ture lands and has stolen the old communal lands of the
peasants in this country, as well in England as in Ger-
many. And this has not happened without a counter-
poise. For every acre of common land which the great

206 LANDMARKS OF SCfEKTIFIC SOCIALISM

landlords in England converted into arable land they
have made at least three acres of arable land in Scotland
into shooting preserves and mere places for the hunting
of wild animals.

We have to consider the declaration of Herr Duehring
to the effect that the cultivation of large parcels of land
has not come into existence otherwise than through great
landlords and their slaves, a declaration which we have
seen implies an entire ignorance of history. We have
now to see how far at different epochs the cultivation of
the soil has been carried on by means of slaves, as in
the palmy days of Greece, or by means of tenants, like
the socage tenure, since the Middle Ages, and then what
has been the social function of the greater landlordism
at different periods of history.

If Herr Duehring means that the mastery of man by
men as a preliminary to the mastery of nature by man
is a universal law, that our present economic condition,
the stage attained to-day in agriculture and industry, is
the result of a society which has developed itself in
class antagonisms, in mastership on the one hand and
in slavery on the other hand, he says something which
is a mere commonplace since the publication of the Com-
munist Manifesto. We have thus to explain the exist-
ence of these classes and when Herr Duehring has no
further explanation to give than " force " we are right
back at the beginning again. The mere fact that the
subject and the plundered have always been more numer-
ous and that therefore the actual force has rested with
them is enough to show the stupidity of the entire force
theory. We have therefore still to explain the origin of
master and subject classes. They have come into being
in two ways.

When men originally sprang from the lower animals

POLITICAL ECONOMY 207

they came into history, still half-wild animals, elemen-
tary, with no power over the forces of nature, still un-
acquainted with their own powers, as poor as the ani-
mals and hardly more productive than they. There pre-
vailed a certain equality in the conditions of life, and as
far as the heads of families were concerned an equality
of social condition — there was at least an absence of
those class distinctions which developed later in the
agricultural communities. In such a social state there
were certain common interests which overrode the inter-
ests of the individual in certain respects, the settlement
of disputes, the repression of individuals who exceeded
their rights, the looking after the water supply, particu-
larly in hot countries, and finally under the conditions
of life in the primeval forests, religious functions. We
find analogous communal duties exercised by communal
officials at all periods as well in the oldest German mark
communities as in India to-day. These are contempo-
raneous with a sort of beginning of authority and state
power in a rudimentary form. The productive forces
develop ; a denser population produces common and then
conflicting interests between members of the society,
the grouping of which in accordance with a new divi^on
of labor causes the creation of new organs for the pur-
pose of maintaining the society on the one hand and
repressing the antagonistic interests on the other. These
organs which act for the entire group have different
forms according to the varying circumstances of the in-
dividual groups, partly through the natural growth of
a hereditary leadership in a world where everything pro-
ceeds naturally and partly through a growing need owing
to the development of conflicts with other groups. How
these social functions which were subsidiary to society
came in the course of time to triumph over society ; how

208 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

the original servant, under favorable conditions be-
came transformed into the master, how, according to
circumstances, this master made his appearance as Orien-
tal despot or satrap, as Greek chieftain, as Celtic clan
chief, etc., how far he relied on force for this transforma-
tion and finally how the individual leaders associated
themselves into a dominant class we have here no oppor-
tunity to consider. We can only state that real social
duties lay at the base of the political domination and that
the political supremacy has only existed as long as the
politically supreme fulfilled these social functions. How
many despotisms have risen and fallen among the Per-
sians and Hindoos, and everybody knows quite well that
the public management of the irrigation was the prime
necessity of agriculture in those places. The " edu-
cated " English were the first to observe this among the
Hindoos ; they let the canals and locks fall into disuse
and they have now discovered by the regular recurrence
of famine that they have neglected the only opportunity
to make their rule at least as righteous as that of their
predecessors.

But there is another form of class distinction besides
the one described. The natural division of labor in the
agricultural families permitted at a certain point of pros-
perity the introduction of foreign labor power. This
was particularly the case in countries where the old com-
mon ownership of the soil had disappeared or whefe at
kast the old system of common cultivation had become
supplanted by the cultivation of separate plots by indi-
vidual families. Production had so far developed that
the human labor force was able to produce more than
was necessary for the support of the individual laborer.
The time was ripe for the employment of more labor-
power, labor-power had become a value. But the

POLITICAL ECONOMY 209

limitations of the communal system did not afford any
attainable surplus labor power. Yet war did give such
an opportunity for getting surplus labor power and
war was as old as the simultaneous existence of groups
of communal groups in close juxtaposition. Up to this
time nien did not take prisoners of war, they killed them
right off, and, at a still earlier date, they ate them. But
at the stage of economic development of which we speak
they had a value and they were not only allowed to live
but were set to work. So force instead of being the
master of economic conditions was pressed into the ser-
vice of those conditions. Slavery was discovered. It
soon became the dominant form of production among
all people who had developed beyond the tribal communal
stage and as a matter of fact was at the end one of the
main reasons for the break up of the communal system.
Slavery first made the division of labor between agri-
culture and industry completely possible and brought
into existence the flower of the old world, Greece.
Without slavery there would have been no Grecian state,
no Grecian art and science and no Roman Empire.
There would have been no modern Europe without the
foundation of Greece and Rome. We must not forget
that our entire economic, political and mtellectual de-
velopment has its foundation in a state of society in
which slavery was regarded universally as necessary.
In this sense we may say that without the ancient slavery
there would have been no modern socialism.
— ^It is very easy to make preachments about slavery and
to express our moral indignation at such a scandalous
institution. Unfortunately the whole significance of this
is that it merely says that these old institutions do not
correspond with our present conditions and the senti-
ments engendered by these conditions. We do not how-

2.IO LANDMARKS OP SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

ever in this way explain how these institutions came into
existence, why they came into existence and the role
which they have played in history. And when we enter
upon this matter we are obliged to say in spite of all con-
tradiction and accusations of heresy that the introduction
of slavery under the conditions of that time was a great
step forwards. It is a fact that man sprang from the
lower animals and has had to employ barbaric and really
bestial methods in order to rid himself of barbarism.
The old communal system where it persisted built up
the most elementary form of the state, Oriental despot-
ism, from India to Russia. Only where it has been dis-
solved has the people progressed and the next economic
step lay in the development of production by means of
slave labor. It is evident that as long as hurnan labor
was so little productive that it afforded only a small sur-
plus over the necessary means of life, the development
of the productive forces, the institution of commerce,
the development of the State and of law and the founda-
tion of art and science were only possible through an
increase in the subdivision of labor. This implied the
broad division between the mass of the workers and the
directors of labor, trade, state, state-business, and later
the occupation of a few privileged persons in art and
science. The simplest and most natural form of this
subdivision of labor was slavery. In the conditions of
the ancient, and especially the Greek world, the advance
to a society founded on class distinction could only be
for the slaves, the prisoners of war from whom the ma-
jority of slaves were recruited inste-ad of being mur-
dered as they would have been at an earlier date or
instead of being eaten as they would have been at a stage
still earlier.

Here we add that all the historical antitheses of rob-

i>OLITlCAL ECONOMY itt

bers and robbed of master and subject classes find their
explanation in the relatively undeveloped productivity
of human labor. As long as the actual working people
claim that they have no time left at the close of their
necessary labors to attend to the common business of
society — the organization of labor, the business of the
government, the administration of justice, art, science,
etc., just so long will distinct classes exist which are free
from actual labor to carry on these functions. Naturally
these classes do not hesitate to lean more and more and
more upon the shoulders of the working class for their
own advantage. The development of the great industry
with its enormous increase in the forces of production
for the first time permitted of the subdivision of labor
in all social grades and thus allowed tif the reduction of
the time necessary for labor so that enough leisure re-
mains for all to take part in the actual public business —
theoretical as well as practical. So that now for the
first time the dominant and exploiting classes have be-
come superfluous and even an obstacle to social progress,
and so now for the first time they will be unceremon-
iously brushed aside in spite of their " pure force."

When Herr Duehring then shows his scorn of the
Greek civilisation because it was founded on slavery
he might just as reasonably reproach the Greeks for not
having steam engines and electric telegraphs. And
when he explains that our modern wage slavery is only
a somewhat transformed and ameliorated inheritance of
chattel slavery and not to be explained from itself ( that
is from the economic laws of modern society) it only
signifies that wage slavery, like chattel slavery, is a form
of class domination and class subjection as every child
knows, or it is false. So we might with the same right
maintain that wage slavery is only a milder form of

^12 LANDMARKS OF SCIEHttFlC gOCIALtSM

cannibalism, the established original method of dispos-
ing, of conquered enemies.

The, role which force has played in history with respect
to economic development is therefore clear. In the first
place, all political force rests originally on an economic
social function, and developed in proportion as the old
tribal communistic society was dissolved and transformed
into various grades of private producers, and the admin-
istrators of the communal functions therefore became
more widely separated from the rest of the community.
In the second place, when political force, independent of
society^ has transformed itself from the position of ser-
vant to that of master, it may work in two directions.
In the first place, it may work sensibly and in the direc-
tion of general economic development. In this case
there is no quarrel between the two, economic develop-
ment is advanced. Or it may work against it and then
with few exceptions it succumbs to the economic develop-
ment. These few exceptions consist of individual bases
of tyranny where barbaric conquerors have overcome a
country and have destroyed the economic forces which
they did not know how to handle. Thus the Christians
in Spain destroyed the irrigation works upon which the
highly developed agriculture and horticulture of that
country depended. Every conquest by a more barbar-
ous people interferes with economic development and de-
stroys numerous productive forces. But in the great
majority of instances of the permanent conquest of a
country, the more barbaric conquerors are obliged to
adopt the higher economic conditions into which their
conquest has brought them. They are assimilated into
the conquered people and are compelled to adopt their
language. But where — apart from instances of con-
quest — the inner political forces of a country comes in

POLITICAL ECONOMY 213

conflict with its economic development, which at the
present day is practically true of all political force, the
battle has always ended with the destruction of the
political force. Without exception and inexorably, eco-
nomic development has attained its goal. The last most
striking example of which we have already called atten-
tion to, the French Revolution. If, as according to Herr
Duehring's teachings, the economic development and the
economic conditions of a certain country are altogether
dependent upon political forces there is no explanation
of the fact that Frederick William IV after 1848 could
not succeed, in spite of his army, in attaching the guilds
of the Middle Ages and other romantic tomfooleries to
the steam-engines, railroads and the newly developing
greater industry, or why the Czar who is still much more
powerful could not only not pay his debts but could not
collect his forces without drawing on the credit of the
economic conditions of Western Europe.

According to Herr DueHring force is the absolute
evil. The first act of force is to him the first fall into
sin. His whole conception is a preachment over the in-
fection of all history up to the present time with the
original sin. He talks about tbe disgraceful falsifying
of all natural and social Idws by the invention of the
devil, force. That force plays another role in history,
a revolutionary role, that it is in the words of Marx, the
midwife of the old society which is pregnant with the
new, that it is the tool by the means of which social
progress is forwarded, and foolish, dead political forms
destroyed, — of that Herr Duehring has no word to say,
only with sighs and groans does he admit the possibility
that force may be necessary for the overthrow of a
thievish economic system. He simply declares that every
application of force demoralizes him who uses it. And

214 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

til is in Spite of the moral and intellectual uplift which
has followed every victorious revolution. He says this
in Germany, too, where a powerful and necessary upris-
ing would at least have the advantage of abolishing the
slavish snobbery of the national mind which has pre-
vailed since the humiliation of the Thirty Years War.
And this foolish and senseless sort of preaching is set
up in opposition to the most revolutionary party known
to history.

V. Theory of Value

It is now about a hundred years since a book appeared
in Lcipsic which by the beginning of this century had
gone through thirty-one editions and which was dis-
tributed throughout the towns and the country districts
by officials, preachers and humanitarians, of all sorts,
and which was universally adopted in the schools as a
reader. This book was called, " The Children's Friend "
by Rochow. It had the object of teaching the children
of the peasant and laboring classes their vocation in life-
and their duties to their social and political superiors,
and making them satisfied with their lot in life, with
black bread and potatoes, compulsory servitude, low
wages, fatherly beatings and other similar agreeable
things. In pursuit of this end, the youth in town and
country was informed what a wise provision of nature
it was that man was obliged to get his food and enjoy-
ment by means of his labor, and how fortunate the peas-
ant and handworker ought to feel that they were able
to spice their food with hard labor while the spendthrift
and the picture suffered the pangs of indigestion or lack
of appetite. These commonplaces which old Rochow
thought good enough for the peasant children of his

POLITICAL ECONOMY 215

day have been elevated into the " absolute fundamental "
of the newest political economy by Herr Duehring.

Value is defined as follows by Herr Duehring " Value
is what economic goods and activities will fetch in ex-
change." What they will fetch is shown " by the price
or some other equivalent, wages for example." In
other words Value is price. Or not to do Herr Duehr-
ing an injury and to show the absolute absurdity of his
definition in his own language, " Value is prices." On
page 19 he says " Value and its prices expressed in
money " and he also affirms that the same value has very
different prices ^and therefore has different values. If
Hegel had not died long ago he would hang himself out
of pure jealousy, for, with all his theology, he could not
have produced this value which has as many different
values as it has prices. One would have to possess the
confidence of Herr Duehring to begin a new and more
profound treatment of political economy with the declara-
tion that there is no difference between value and price
except that one ,is expressed in terms of money and the
-other is not.

(After gentle raillery of Duehrihg's statements En-
gels proceeds.)

The actual, practical value of an object according to
Herr Duehring consists in two things, first in the amount
of human labor contained in it and secondly in a forcibly
imposed tax. In other words value as it exists to-day is
a monopoly price. If all wares have this monopoly price,
as according to this theory, only two things are possible.
Either every buyer, as buyer, loses what he made as
seller, for prices have only changed their names, they
are really the same, everything remains as it was and the
much talked of exchange value is merely imaginary, or
the imposed cost represents real values, values produced

2l6 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

by the working value-making class, but taken by the
monopolising class, and this sum of values is simply
unpaid labor. In this latter case we come, in spite of
the force theory, and the compulsory taxation theory and
the special exchange value theory back again to the
Marxian theory of value.

The fixing of the value of a commodity by wages
vvhich is frequently confused by Adam Smith with the
fixing of value by the time expended in labor has been,
since the time of Ricardo, denounced by political econo-
mists and only to-day persists in popular economics. It
is now the sycophants of the existing capitalistic system
who declare that value is fixed by wages and therefore
declare the profits of the capitalists to be higher kind of
wages, wages of abstinence, in that the capitalist has not
dissipated his capital, wages of superintendence, prem-
iums on risks, etc. Herr Duehring only differ^s from
there in that he calls profits robbery. In other words
Herr Duehring founds his socialism on the worst teach-
ings of the popular economists. His popular economics
and his socialism stand or fall together.

It is clear that what a workman accomplishes and
what he costs are different matters from what a machine
makes and what it costs. The value 'which a workman
makes in a day of twelve hours has nothing in common
with the value of the means of life which he consumes
in this working day and the periods of rest in connec-
tion with it. There may be one, three, fcxur or seven
hours of labor time incorporated in these means of
livelihood according to the stage of the productivity of
labor. Let us take seven hours as the necessary time
for the production of them. Then Herr Duehring and
the vulgar economists declare that the product of twelve
hours labor has the value of the product of seven hours

POLITICAL ECONOMY 217

labor or in other words twelve is equal to seven. To
make the matter more explicit, a peasant produces say
twenty hectolitres of wheat in a year. During this time
he consumes a sum of values which may be expressed by
fifteen hectolitres. Then the twenty hectolitres have
the same value as the fifteen in the same market under
identical conditions. In other words 20 equals 15.
And this is failed political economy !

The entire development of human society from' the
position of savagery began from the day when the labor
of a family resulted in the production of more than was
necessity for its support, from the day when a part of the
labor was no longer expended on mere means of living
but was transformed into means of production. A sur-
plus of labor product over and above the cost of the
maintenance of labor, and the creation and increase of
a social production and reserve fund out of this surplus
was and is the foundation of alt social, political and in-
tellectual development. In history up to the present time
this fund has been the property of a certain superior
class which has, with its possession, also the political
mastery and the spiritual supremacy. The approaching
social revolution will make this social production and re-
serve fund that is the entire mass of raw material, in-
struments of production, and means of life for the first
time really social property, in that it will put an end to
its monopolisation by the superior class and make it the
common possession of the entire society.

It is one of two things. Suppose value shows itself in
the cost of maintenance of the necessary labor, that is in
present society in wages. If such is the case every
worker gets the value of his product in wages and the
robbery of the working class by the capitalistic class is
an impossiblity. Let it be granted that the cost of main-

2l8 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

taining a worker in a given society is three marks. Then
the daily product of the worker is, according to the pop-
ular economist, of the value of three marks. Now let
us consider that the capitalist who employs this worker
takes a profit on this product and sells it for four marks.
Other capitalists do the same thing. But thereupon the
worker can no longer maintain himself with three marks
a day, it will cost him four marks. Other conditions
remaining the same, wages expressed in terms of the
means of life must remain the same arid wages expressed
in gold will rise therefore from three to four marks
daily. What the capitalists gain in the form of profit on
the working class they have to return in the form of
-wages. So wc are just where we were at the beginning.
If wages signify value, no plunder of the working class
by the capitalist is possible. But the creation of a sur-
plus is impossible if, according to our hypothesis the
workers consume as much, as they produce. And since
the capitalists produce no value it is impossible to see
bow they can live. And if such a surplus of production
over consumption does exist, if such a production and
reserve fund exists in the hands of the capitalists there
is no other explanation possible than that the working
class uses only enough values for its own maintenance
and turns over the rest of the goods which it produces to
the capitalist.

On the other hand, if this production and reserve fund
actually exists in the hands of the capitalist class, if it
has really come into existence through the piling up of
profits, (we will leave rent out of the question' for the
present) ; it necessarily comes from the accumulated
profits of the capitalist class taken from the working
class over and above the sums paid by the capitalist
tlass to th^ working class in the form of wages. Value

POLITICAL ECONOMY 219

therefore does not depend upon wages, but upon amount
of labor. The working class renders to the capitalist
class a greater amount of value than it receives in wages
and thus the profit of capital as of all other forms of
the appropriation of unpaid for products of labor is to
be explained on the simple ground of the surplus value
discovered by Marx.

VI. Simple and Compound Labor

(The argument of Duehring against which Engels
here directs his efforts may be best summed up ia Duehr-
ing's concluding words " Marx in his utterances on
value cannot escape the lurking ghost of highly skilled
labor. The prevalent notion of the intellectual classes
has been a hindrance to him in this matter, for according
to this idea it is an enormity to reckon the labor time
of a barrow pusher and an architect as economic equiva-
lents.")

Engels thereupon says " the passage in the works of
Marx which caused this outbreak on the part of Duehr-
ing is very short. Marx is examining the question as to
the basis of the value of commoditiies and answers it by
the statement that it is the amount of human labor con-
tained in them. " This " he goes on " is the expression
of that simple labor force which belongs to the average
human being without any special devolpment. Skilled
labor is a power or rather a multiple of simple labor,
so that a small amount of skilled labor is equivalent to
a larger amount of unskilled labor. Practice shows that
this reduction to the terms of unskilled labor takes place,
A commodity may be the product of skilled labor, its
value may be equivalent to a product of unbilled labor
skilled labor. The proportion in which different forms
of labor are reduced to their general standard in ua-

220 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

skilled labor is established by a social process going
on behind the backs of the producers, and appears to
them merely customary."

Here Marx is only dealing with the value of com-
modities, that is of objects produced and exchanged by
private producers in a society consisting of private pro-
ducers producing for their own profit. He is therefore
not concerned here with " absolute value " whatever that
may be but only with the value which is realised in a
given form of society. This value under the given so-
cial conditions is shaped and measured by the human
labor incorporated in the commodities and this human
labor shows itself as the expression of simple human
energy. But every piece of work is not merely an ex-
pression of simple labor force. Very many labor pro-
ducts require the expenditure of more or less time,
money, trouble, and acquired skill or knowledge. Do
these kinds of compound labor show at the same period
of time the same commodity values as simple labor, are
they the expression of merely simple labor force? Evi-
dently not. The product of an hour of compound labor
is a commodity of higher, double or three times the value
of a product of an hour of simple labor. The value of
the product of compound labor can in this comparison be
expressed through the measure of simple labor; and
this reduction of compound labor is carried on by means
of a social progress behind the back of the producer, by
means of which can here be established according to the
theory of value but not explained.

The thing which Marx states here is a simple fact
which happens every day before our eyes in the present
capitalistic society.

(After some invective and satire hurled at Duehring
Engels proceeds:)

POLttlCAL ECONOltY Ht

Let us examine with regard to equality of value a
little more closely. All labor time is of equal value, that
of the barrow pusher and that of the architect. There-
fore labor time and consequently labor itself has a value.
But labor is the creator of all values. It is the only
thing which gives the original products of nature a
value in the economic sense. Value in itself is nothing
but the expression in a given qbject of necessary, social,
human labor. One might just as well speak of and fix
a value to labor as speak of the value of value, of the
weight, not of a specific body, but of gravity itself. Herr
Duehring calls people like Owen, St. Simon and Fourier,
social alchemists. When he invents a value for labor
time, that is for labor, he shows that he is far below these
same alchemists.

For Socialism, which will emancipate human labor
force from its place as a commodity, the understanding
that labor has no value and can have none is a matter
of the greatest importance. With an understanding of
it, all attempts made by Herr Duehring by means of his
crude worker-socialism (Arbeitersozialismus) to regu-
late the division of the means of existence, as a kind
of higher wages, fall to the ground. From it there
follows the broader view, since it is controlled by
purely economic motives, that distribution regulates
itself in the interests of production, and production is
advanced in the greatest degree by a method of distri-
bution which permits all the social departments to de-
velop, maintain, and express their capacities to the full-
est possible extent. To the ideas of the intellectuals
which have come into Herr Duehring's possession, it
must always seem to be an enormity that it will abolish
barrow pushing and architecture simultaneously as pro-
fessions, and that the man who has given half an hour

222 LANDilARKS OP SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

to architecture will also push the cart a little until his
work as architect is again in demand. It would be a
pretty sort of socialism which perpetuated the business
of barrow-pushing.

If the equality of value of labor time has the signifi-
cance that workers produce equal products in equal per-
iods of time it is evidently false, unless an average is
first taken. Of two workmen at the same branch of
industry the value of the product of their labor time
will differ according to the intensity of labor and their
respective ability. No scheme of economic equality, at
least on our planet, can remedy this unfortunate state of
affairs. What then is left of the equality of all and every
sort of labor? Nothing but high sounding phrases
which have no economic value, nothing but the evident
inability of Herr Duehring to distinguish between the
fixing of value by labor and the fixing of value by the
wages of labor, only the ukase, which is the founda;tion
of the new social economy, that wages shall be equal for
equal amounts of labor time. Really the old French
communists and Weitling had much better grounds for
their equality of wages theories.

How then do we solve the whole weighty question of
the higher wages of compound labor? In a society of
private producers, private individuals or their families
have to bear the cost of creating intellectual workers.
An intellectual slave always commanded a better price,
an intellectual wage worker gets higher wages. In an
organized socialist society, society bears the cost and to
it therefore belong the fruits, the greater value produced
by intellectual labor. The laborer himself has no further'
claim. Whence it follows that there are many difficul-
ties connected with the beloved claim of the worker for
the full product of his toil.

POLITICAL ECONOMY M3

VII. Capital and Surplus Value

(" Marx does not have the usual economic idea of cap-
ital that it is means of production already produced, but
he seeks to endow it with a special dialectic history in the
metamorphosis of a historical idea. Capital is expressed
in gold, it creates an historical period which has its begin-
ning in the sixteenth century and the establishment oi
a world-market. Any keen economic analysis is im-
possible with such a notion. Such barren conceptions
which are half historical and half logical destroys the
possibility of any proper discrimination with respect to
the matter." These remarks of Duehring arc answered
as follows by Engels:)

According to Marx, then, capital manifested itself
as gold at the beginning of the sixteenth century. It is
just as if anybody were to say that specie had ex-
pressed itself as cattle for three thousand years, be-
cause formerly cattle had performed the gold functions
along with others. Only Herr Duehring could be guilty
of such a crude and distorted expression, Marx in his
analysis of the economic forms in which the process of
the circulation of commodities takes places simply de-
clares gold to be the last form, " This last product of
the circulation of commodities is the form in which cap-
ital first appears. Historically capital comes with the
possession, of property in the form of money, as hoards
of money, merchant-capital, and usury-capital. . . .
This history is goinr on every day before our eyes.
New capital comes on the scene, that is the market, —
the market for commodities, the labor market or the
money market, simply as money, money which is trans-
formed into capital by a definite process." Again Marx
states the fact. It is useless for you to struggle against

^^4 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

it, Herr Duehring, Capital must express itself in gold.

Marx further examines the process by which money is
transformed into capital and discovers that the form in
which money circulates as capital is the inversion of the
form in which 'it circulates as the universal equivalent.
The individual owner of commodities sells to buy^ he sells
what he does not need, and buys with the money thus
obtained what he does need. The budding capitalist
buys on the contrary what he does not want himself, he
buys to sell, and to sell for a higher money value than
he put into the business, he makes a money profit, and
this profit Marx calls surplus value.

What is the origin of this surplus value? Either the
buyer buys goods below their value or the seller sells
them above their value. In both cases gain and loss
would balance one another, since every buyer is also a
seller. It can also not arise from extortion, for extortion
might enrich one at the expense of the other but it could
not increase the total sum of money neither could it
increase the amount of commodities in circulation.
" The entire capitalist class of a country cannot overreach
itself."

Now, we find that the totality of the capitalist class
in every country grows richer before our very eyes, by
the process of selling dearer than it botight, by appro-_
priating surplus value. So we are just at the beginning
of the discussion. Where does this surplus value come
from? This question has to be answered on purely
economic grounds to the exclusion of all cheating, and
all invasion of force. How is it possible to keep selling
dearer than one buys under the assumption that equal
values are always exchanged for equal values?

The solution of this problem is the crowning glory of
the work of Marx. He sheds clear daylight in economic

POLITICAL ECONOMY 225

places where the earlier socialists no less than the
bourgeois economists have groped in utter darkness.
From his work dates the origin of scientific socialism.

The solution is as follows. The power of increase
in money which is transformed into capital cannot pro-
ceed from the money neither does it depend upon trade,
since the money only realizes the price of the commodi-
ties and this price is, since we hold that only equal val-
ues are exchanged, no different from its value. On
the same grounds the power of increase cannot come
from the exchange of commodities. The change there-
fore depends upon the commodities which are exchanged,
but not upon their value, since they are bought and sold
at their value. It arises from their consumption-value
as such; that is the change must arise out of the con-
sumption of commodities. " In order for a commodity
to derive value from consumption our possessor of
money must be fortunate enough to discover a commod-
ity whose use-value has the peculiar property of being
a source of value, whose consumption would imply the
expenditure of labor and thus be value-producing. And
the possessor of money finds such a specific commodity
on the market in the shape of labor-power." If, as we
have seen, labor has no value this is by no means the case
with labor-force. This has a value, as it is a commodity,
and, as a matter of fact, it is a commodity tO-day and
this value is fixed " like that of every other commodity
by the amount of labor time necessary for the production
and reproduction of this specific commodity." It is
fixed by the labor time which is necessary for the pro-
curing of the means of livelihood required to maintain
the laborer in a condition to continue laboring and re-
produce his kind. Let us suppose that these' means of
livelihood represent, taking one day with another, six

226 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

hours labor-time a day. Our budding capitalist who
buys labor force for his business, that is hires a laborer,
pays this laborer the full daily value of his labor force,
if he pays him a sum of money which represents six
hours of labor. If the kborer has only expended six
hours in the service of the capitalist he has got the full
return of his expenditure, the day's value of his labor-
force has been paid. But money could not be trans-
formed into capital in this fashion, it would have pro-
duced no surplus value. The buyer of labor-power has
quite another view of the nature of his business. Since
only six hours' work is necessary to maintain the laborer
for twenty-four hours, it does not follow that the laborer
cannot work twelve hours out of the twenty-four. The
value of labor force and its realization in the laboj-pro-
cess are two different magnitudes. The owner of money
pays out a day's value of labor-force but there belongs to
him its use for the day, the whole day's labor. That
the value which it produces in the course of a day is
double its own value for the day is fortunate for the
buyer but according to the laws of exchange no injustice
to the seller. The laborer then costs the owner of money
according to our calculation the value product of six
hours' labor, but he gives him daily the value product
of twelve hours' labor. The difference to the credit of
the owner of the money is six hours' unpaid extra labor,
an unpaid for surplus product, in which the labor of six
hours is incorporated. The trick is done. Surplus val
ue is produced, money is transformed into capital.

While Marx, in this way, proved how surplus value
exists and the only possible way in which it can exist,
under the laws which regulate the exchange of com-
modities he also exposed the present capitalistic methods
of production and the methods of appropriation resting

POLITICAL ECONOMY 227

upon them and unveiled the secret upon which the whole
arrangement of the society of to-day depends.

There is a necessary presupposition to this origin and
birth of capital. " For the transformation of money
into capital the money owner must first find free
laborers in the market, free in the double sense that
as a free person the laborer can use his labor power as
a commodity, that he has no other wares to sell, that he
is unemployed and that he is free of everything necessary
to the realisation of his labor power." But this condi-
tion of a possessor of money or commodities on the one
hand, and, on the other, of the possessorn of nothing, ex-
cept his own labor force, is no natural condition of
affairs nor is it common to all periods of history ; " it .
is clearly the result of a historical development, the
product of a whole series of older forms of social
production." And this free laborer first strikes
our notice as a historical phenomenon at the end of
the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth
century as a result of the dissolution of feudal so-
ciety. Thereupon with the creation of the world trade
and the world market which dates from the same period
the foundation was laid for the mass of moveable wealth
to become more and more transformed into capital and
for the capitaHstic system, directed more and more to the
production of surplus value, to become the dominant sys-
tem.

VIII. Capital and Surplus Value {Conclusion)

(Duehring having said that the term surplus value
merely signifies in ordinary language, rent, profit and
interest, Engels still further explains)

We have already seen that Marx does not say that
the surplus product of the industrial capitalist, of which

ijSf' LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

f>e is the first owner, is always exchanged for its value,
• ts Herr Duehring points out. Marx plainly says that
tfade profit only constitutes a portion of the surplus
value and under the foregoing conditions this is only
possible if the factory proprietor sells his product under
value to the trader and thus parts with a portion of the
booty. Marx' contention rationally put is How is sur-
plus value transformed into its subordinate forms, profit,
interest, trade-profits, ground rents etc.? and this ques-
tion Marx undertakes to answer in the third volume of
Capital. But since Herr Duehring cannot wait long
enough for the second volume to appear he has in the
meantime to take a close look at the first volume. He
thereupon reads that the immanent laws of capitalistic
production, the course of the development of capitalism,
realise themselves as the necessary laws of competition
and thus are brought to the consciousness of the individ*
ual capitalists as dominant motives. That therefore a
scientific analysis of competition is only possible when
the real nature of capital is grasped, just as the apparent
movement of heavenly bodies can only be understood by
apprehending their real movement, and not merely those
movements which are perceptible to the senses. So
Marx shows how d certain law, the law of value, ap-
pears under given conditions in the competitive system
and makes evident its impelling force. Herr Duehring
might have understood that competition plays an im-
portant role in the distribution of surplus values, and,
after sufficient thought, might have grasped at least
the outlines of the transformation of surplus value into
its subordinate forms from the examples given in the
first volume.

Herr Duehring finds competition to be the stumbling
block in the way of his Comprehension. He cannot uti-

POLITICAL ECONOMY 229

derstand how competing entrepreneurs can manage to
sell the entire product of labqr including the surplus
product for so much more than the natural cost of pro-
duction. Here again that " force " of his which, in his
estimation, is the very evil thing, comes into play. Ac-
cording to Marx, the surplus product does not have
any cost of production, it is the part of the product
which costs the capitalist nothing. If the entrepreneurs
were to sell the surplus product at its real cost of pro-
duction they would have to give it away. Is it not a
fact that the competing entrepreneurs really sell the
product of labor every day at its natural cost of pro-
duction? According to Herr Duehring the cost oi pro-
duction consists " in the expenditure of labor or force
and therefor^ in the last analysis must be measured by
cost of maintenance," and therefore, in. present day
society, is to be estimated at the cost of the raw ma-
terial, instruments of labor and actual wages paid in
distinction to taxation, profit and compulsory raising of
prices. It is well recognised that in modern society the
competing entrepreneurs do not sell their wares at the
natural cost of production but calculate on a profit and
generally get it. This question which Herr Duehring
fancies will level the walls of Marxism as the blast of
Joshua did those of Jericho is a question which the eco-
nomic doctrines of Duehring have to meet also.

" Capitalistic property," he says, " has no practical
value and only realises itself because it implies the exer-
cise of indirect power over man. The testimony to the
existence of this force is capitalistic profit, and the
amount of this latter depends upon the extent and in-
tensity of the power of ' force.' . . . Capitalistic
profit is a political and social institution which manifests
itself very strongly as competition. The entrepreneurs

230 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

take their stand on this relation and each one of them
maintains his position. A certain amount of profit is a
necessity of the dominant economic condition."

We know quite well that the entrepreneurs are in a
position to sell the products of labor at a cost above the
natural cost of production. Surely tkrr Duehring does
not think so meanly of his public as to hold the position
that profit on capital stands above competition as the
King of Prussia used to stand above the law. The pro-
ceeding by which the King of Prussia reached his po-
sition of superiority to the law we all know, the methods
by which profit has come to be mightier than competition
is just what Herr Duehring has to explain and what he
stubbornly refuses to explain. It is no argument when
he says that the entrepreneurs trade from this position
and each one of them maintains his owri place. If we
take him at his word, how is it possible for a number
of people each to be able to trade only on certain terms
and yet each one of them to keep his position? The
gildmen of the Middle Ages and the French nobility
of 1789 operated from a decidedly superior position,
and yet thej^ came to grief. The Prussian army at Jena
occupied an advantageous position and yet it had to
abandon it and surrender piecemeal. It is not enough
to tell us that a certain measure of profit is a necessary
concomitant of domination in the economic sphere, it is
necessary to tell us why. We do not get a step further
by the statement of Duehring. " Capitalistic superiority
is inseparable from landlordism. A portion of the peas-
antry is transformed in the cities into factory hands and
in the final analysis into factory material. Profit appears
as another form of rent." This is a mere assertion and
only repeats what should have been explained and
proved. We can come to no other conclusion, then,

POLITICAL ECONOMY 23I

except that Herr Duehring does not like to tackle the
answer to his own question how the capitalists are in
a position to sell products of labor for more than the
natural cost of production, in short Herr Duehring
shirks an explanation of profit. He takes the only path
open to him, a short cut, and simply declares that profit
is the product of " force." This has been stated by Herr
Duehring in his economic theory under the statement
" force distributes." That is all very well ; but the
question still persists what does force distribute?
There must be something to distribute otherwise force
cannot distribute it. The profit which the competing cap-
italists pocket is something actual and tangible. Force
may take but it cannot create. And if Herr Duehring
still obstinately persists in his statement that " force "
takes the profits for the entrepreneurs he is as silent as
the grave as to whence it takes it. Where there is noth-
ing the Kaiser, as all other " force," ceases to operate.
From nothing comes nothing, particularly nothing in
the shape of profits. If capitalistic private property has
not practical actuality, and cannot realize itself, except
by the exercise of indirect force over men, the question
still persists, on the first place, how did the capitalist
government come into possession of this " force " and
in the second place how has this force been transformed
into profits, and in the third place where does it get these
profits ?

(The remainder of this section is merely further
elaboration of this idea with more caustic satire at the
expense of the antagonist of Engels.)

232 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

I IX. Natural Economic Laws — Ground Rent.

(In this chapter Engels proceeds to examine what
Herr Duehring called the " fundamental laws " of his
theory^ of economic science.)

Law No. i. The productivity of economic instru-
ments, natural resources and human force are capable of
being increased by invention and discovery."

We are amazed. Herr Duehring treats us like that
joke of Moliere on the parvenu who was informed that
he had talked prose all his life without being aware of it.
That inventions and discoveries increase the productive
force of labor in many cases (but in many cases not, as
the patent records everywhere show) we have been for
a long time aware.

Law No. IL " Division of Labor. The formation
of branches of work and the splitting up of activities in-
creases the productivity of labor."

As far as this is true it is a mere commonplace since
the time of Adam Smith. HoW far it is true will appear
in the third division of this work.

Law No. IIL " Distcince and transportation are the
most important causes of the advance or hindrance of
the organization of productive forces.

Law No. IV. The industrial state has incomparably
greater capacity for population than the agricultural
state.

Law No. V. " In economics only material interests
count."

These are the natural laws on which Herr Duehring
founds his new economics. He remains true to his
philosophic methods.

(Hereupon Engels proceeds to the discussion of
Duehring's opinions on ground-rent.)

POLITICAL ECONOMY 233

Herr Duehring defines ground-rent as " that income
which the landowner as such derives from ground and
land." The economic idea of ground-rent, which Herr
Duehring undertakes to explain to us, is transformed
light away into the juristic concept so that we are no
further than at first. He compares the leasing of a piece
of land with the loan of capital to an entrepreneur but
finds, as is so often the case, that the comparison will
not hold. Then he says " to pursue the analogy the pro-
fit which remains to the lessee after the payment of
ground-rent, answers to that portion of the profit on
capital which remains to the entrepreneur who operates
with borrowed capital after the interest on the borrowed
capital has been paid."

(To these arguments Engels replies:)

The theory of ground-rent isa special English eco-
nomic matter, and this of necessity because only in Eng-
land does a mode of production exist by which rent is
separated from profit and interest. In England there
prevail the greater landlordism and the greater agricul-
ture. The individual landlords lease their lands in great
farms to lessees who are able to cultivate them in a
capitalistic fashion and do not, like our peasants, work
with their own hands, but employ laborers just like
capitalistic entrepeneurs. We have here then the three
classes of bourgeois society, and the income which each
receives —J- the private landlord in the form of ground-
rent, the capitalist in that of profit and the laborer in
the form of wages. No English economist has ever re-
garded the profit of the lessee as Herr Duehring does
and still less would he have to explain that the profit of
the lessee is what it indubitably is, profit on capital. In
England there is no use to discuss this question for the
question as well as its answer are obvious from the facts

234 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

i

and, since the time of Adam Smith, there has been no
doubt at all about it.

The case in which the lessee cultivates his own land,
as the rule in Germany, for the profit of the ground
landlord does not make any difference in this respect. If
the landlord cultivates the land for his own profit and
furnishes the capital he puts the profit on capital in his
pocket as well as the ground-rent for it cannot be other-
wise under existing conditions. And if Herr Duehring
thinks that rent is something different when the lessee
cultivates the land for himself it is not so and only
shows his ignorance of the matter.

For example : —

" The revenue derived from labor is called wages ;
that derived from stock by the person who manages or
employs it is called profit. The revenue which pro-
ceeds from land is called rent and belongs altogether to
the landlord. The revenue of the farmer is derived
partly from his labor and partly from his stock. . . .
When those three different sorts of labor belong to dif-
ferent persons they are readily distinguished, but when
they belong to the same they are sometimes confounded
with one another at least in common language A gen-
tleman who farms part of his own estate, after paying
the expenses of cultivation, should gain both the rent
of the landlord and the profit of the farmer. He is apt
to denominate, however, his whole gain, profit, and thus
confounds rent with profit, at least in common language.
The greater part of our North American and West
Indian planters are in this situation. They farm, the
greater part of them, their own estates, and accordingly
we seldom hear of the rent of a plantation but frequently
of its profit. ... A gardener who cultivates his
own garden with his own hands, unites in his own per-

POLITICAL ECONOMY 235

son the three different characters of landlord, farmer,
and laborer. His produce, therefore, should pay him
*he rent of the first, the profit of the second and the
wages of the third. The whole, however, is commonly
considered as the wages of his labor. Both rent and
profit are in this case confounded with wages."

This passage is in the sixth chapter of the first book of
Adam Smith. The case of the landholder who tills hi?
own land has been examined a hundred years ago and
the doubts which perplex Herr Duehring so much are
caused entirely by his own ignorance.

X. With Respect to the " Critical History "

This which is the concluding portion of the Second
Division of the work and which deals with Herr Dueh-
ring's estimates of economic writers is omitted as being
of too limited and polemic a character for general inter-
est.

PART III
CHAPTER IX

SOCIALISM

The first two chapters of this Division, Which deal
respectively with the historical and the theoretical sides
of Socialism, are omitted. They have been already
translated. The well known pamphlet " Socialism, Uto-
pian and Scientific " contains both of them. The second
has also been translated by R. C. K. Ensor and published
in his " Modern Socialism."

Production

For him (Herr Duehring) socialism is by no means
a necessary product of economic development, and, still
less, a development of the purely economic conditions of
the present day. He knows better than that. His so-
cialism is a final truth of the last instance, it is " the
natural system of society." He finds its root in a " uni-
versal system of justice." And if he cannot take notice
of the existing conditions which are the product of the
sinful history of man up to the present time in order to
improve them that is so much the worse, we must loc^k
upon it as a misfortune for the true principles of justice.
Herr Duehring forms his socialism as he does every-
thing else on the basis of his two famous men. Instead
of these two marionnetes, as heretofore, playing the
game of lord and slave they are converted to that of
equality and justice and the Duehring socialism is al-
ready fovinded.

236

SOCIALISM 237

Clearly in the view of Herr Duehring the periodic
industrial crises have by no means the same significance
as we must attribute to them. According to Herr Dueh-
ring they are only occasional departures from normality
and furnish a splendid motive for the institution of a
properly regulated system.

( Duehring attributes crises to underconsumption ; to
which Engels replies:)

It is unfortunately true that the underconsumption of^
the masses and the limitation of the expenditures of the
great majority to the necessities of life and the reproduc-
tion thereof is not by any means a new phenomenon.
It has existed as long as the appropriating and the
plundered classes have existed. Even in those historic
peribds where the condition of the masses was excep-
tionally prosperous, as in England in the fifteenth cen-
tury, there was underconsumption ; men were very far
from having their entire yearly product at their own
disposal. Although underconsumption has been a con-
stant historical phenomenon for a thousand years, the
general break down in trade, due to overproduction, has
appeared, for the first time, within the last fifteen years.
Yet the vulgar political economy of Herr Duehring at-
tempts to explain the new phenomenon, not by means of
the new factor of overproduction, but by means of the
exceedingly old factor of underconsumption. It is just
as if one were to try and explain a change in the rela-
tion of two mathematical quantities, one of which is con-
stant and the other variable, not from the fact that the
variable quantity has varied, but that the constant has
remained constant. The underconsumption of the
masses is a necessary condition of all forms of society
in which robbers and robbed exist, and therefore of the
<,:ipitalist system. But it is the capitalist system which

238 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

first brings about the economic crisis. Underconsump-
tion is a prerequisite of crises and plays a very conspicu-
ous role in them, but it has no more to do with the eco-
nomic crisis of the present 'day than it had with the
former absence of such crises.

In every society in which production has developed
ndturally, to which class that of to-day belongs, the pro-
ducers do not master the means of production but the
means of production dominate the producers.

In such a society every new leverage of production is
converted into a new means of subduing the producers
beneath the means of production. This was the cause of
that instrument of production, the mightiest up to the
time of the introduction of the greater industry, the di-
vision of labor. The first great division of labor, the
separation of the city and country, doomed the inhabit-
ants of the rural districts to a thousand years of stupidity
and the people of the towns to be the slaves of their own,
handiwork. It denied the chance of intellectual devel-
opment to the one and of physical development to the
other. If the peasant had his land and the town dweller
his handiwork, it is just as true to say that the land had
the peasant and the handiwork the townsman. As far as
there was a division of labor there was also a division
of man. The rise of one single fact slaughtered all
former intellectual and bodily capacities. This annexa-
tion of man grew in proportion as the division of labor
developed and reached its culmination in maufacture.
Manufacture distributes production into its separate
operations, makes one of these operations the function
of the individual worker, and imprisons the worker for
his whole life to a given function and to a given tool.
" It . forces the workingman to become an abnormality,

SOCIALISM 239

since it makes him concentrate his efforts on detail at
the expense of the sacrifice of a world of forces and ca-
pacities. . . . The individual himself becomes subdi-
vided, he is transformed into the automatic tool of the di-
vision of Jabor " (Marx). This tool in many cases finds
its perfection in the literal crippling of the worker, body
and soul. The machinery of the greater industry de-
grades the workingman from a machine to being the mere
appendage of a machine. " From the lifelong specializa-
tion of looking after a machine there comes the lifelong
specialization of serving a part of a machine. The abuse
of machinery transforms the worker from childhood
into a portion of a part of a machine" (Marx). And
not only the workingman but the classes which indirectly
or directly plunder the workingman are also themselves
involved in the division of labor and become the slaves
of their own tools. The spiritually-barren bourgeois is
the slave of his own capital and his own profit-getting,
the jurist is dominated by his ossified notions of justice
which rule him as a self-contained force ; the " refined
classes " are dominated by the local limitations and prej-
udices, by their own physical and spiritual astigmatism,
by their specialised education and their lifelong bond-
age to this specialty, even though the specialty be doing
nothing. ^

The Utopists were thoroughly aware of the effects
of the division of labor, of the effect on the one hand of
crippling the worker and on the other of crippling the
work, the unavoidable result of the lifelong, monotonous
repetition of one and the same act. The rise of the
antagonism between town and country was regarded
by Fourier as well as Owen as the beginning of the
rise of the old division of labor. According to both of
them the population should be divided into groups of

240 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

from six hundred to three thousand each, distributed
over the country. Each group has an enormous house
in the midst of its territory and the housekeeping is
done in common. Fourier occasionally speaks of towns
but these only consist of four or five of the big com-
munal houses in close proximity to each other. By
both of them the work of society is divided into agricul-
ture and industry. According to Fourier, handwork and
machine manufacture were both included in the latter
while Owen made the great industry play the most im-
portant part, and the steam engine and machinery per-
formed the work of the community. But both in agri-
culture and manufacture the two writers named gave
the greatest possible variety of occupation to individuals,
and accordingly the education of the young provided
for the most universal technical training. Both of them
think that there will be a universal development of the
human race as a result of a universal practical partici-
pation in practical work, and that work will recover its
old attractiveness, which has been lost as a result of
the division of labor, by virtue of this variety and the
shortening of the time expended upon it.

Just as far as society obtains the domination of the
social means of production in order to organize them
socially it abolishes the existing servitude of man to his
own means of production. Society cannot be free with-
out every member of society being free. The old
methods of production must be completely revolutionized
and the old form of the division of labor must be done
away with above all. In its place an organization
of production '"will have to be made in which, on the one
hand, no single individual will be able to shift his share
in productive labor, in providing the essentials of hum^n

SOCIALISM 241

existence, upon another, and on the other hand produc-
tive labor instead of being a means of slavery will be a
means towards human freedom, in that it offers an
opportunity to everyone to develop his full powers, physi-
cal and intellectual, in every direction and to exercise
them so that it makes a pleasure out of a burden.

This is no longer at the present time a phantasy, a
pious wish. Owing to the present development of the
powers of production, production has proceeded far
enough, provided that society eadows itself with the
possession of the social forces and abolishes the checks
and impediments, as well as the waste of products and
productive forces, which springs from the capitalistic
methods, to make a general reduction of labor time, to
an amount; small as compared with present day ideas.

The abolition of the old method of division of labor
is not an advance which would not be possible except
at the expense of the productivity of labor, quite other-
wise. It is a condition of production which has come
about spontaneously through the great industry. " The
machine industry does away with the necessity of con-
stantly distributing groups of workmen at the different
machines by keeping the worker constantly at the same
task. Since the total product of the factory, proceeds
not from the worker but from the machine, a continual
changing about of individuals could not exist, without
an interruption of the labor-process. Finally the speed
with which work at the machine is learnt even by chil-
dren does away with the necessity of training a distinct
class of workmen exclusively as machine laborers."
But while the capitalistic method of use of machinery
does away with the old limited particularity of labor,
and, in spite of the fact, that technique is rendered super-
fluous, machinery itself rebels against the anachronism.

242 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

The technical basis of the greater industry is revolution-
ary. " Through machinery, chemical processes and
other methods, the functions of the working class and
the social labor process are revolutionized along with the
technical basis of production. The division of labor is
also revolutionized and masses of capital and labor are
hurled incontinently from one branch of industry to
another. The nature of the greater industry demands
mobility of labor, a fluidity of functions and a complete
adaptibility on the part of the laborers. We have seen
how this absolute contradiction shows itself in the con-
tinual sacrifice of the working class, the most complete
waste of labor force, and the dominance of social anar-
chy. But if the mobility of labor now appears to be
a law of nature beyond human control which realizes
itself, in spite of all obstacles, it also becomes a matter
of life and death for the greater industry, owing to its
catastrophic character, to recognise the mobility of labor
and hence the greatest possible adaptibiHty of the work-
ing class, as a universal law of social production, and
to accommodate circumstances to its normal ^develop-
ment. It becomes a question of life and death for the
greater industry to keep an enormous number of people
on the edge of starvation always in reserve, in order
that they may be able to be placed at the disposal of
the needs of capital as these vary.

While the greater industry has taught us how to trans-
form molecular movement into mass movement in order
to fulfill technical needs, it has, in the same measure,
freed industrial production from local limits. Water
power was local, steam power is free. If water power
belongs to the country, steam power is by no means
limited to the town. It is capitalistic practice which
cause? concentration into cities and which makes manu-

SOCIALISM 243

facturing towns of manufacturing villages. But thereby
at the same time it undermines the essentials of its own
motive force. The first requisite of the steam engine
and a prime requisite of all branches of motive power is
a sufficient quantity of pure water. The factory town
transforms all water into evil smelling sewage. There-
fore, in proportion as the concentration into cities is
the foundation of capitalistic production, each individual
capitalist tries to get away from the towns which have
been necessarily produced to the motive forces of the
country. This process may be individually observed in
the textile districts of Lancashire and Yorkshire. The
greater industry creates new towns in the course of its
progress from the town to the country. The same
phenomenon was to be observed in the districts of the
metal industry where somewhat different causes produce
identical results.

The capitalistic character of the greater industry is
responsible for this aimless blundering and these new
contradictions. Only a society which organizes its in-
dustrial forces according to a single great harmonious
plan, can permit industry to settle itself in such a manner
throughout the land as to secure its own development
and the retention and development of the most important
elements of production.

The abolition of the antagonfsm between town and
country is now not only possible, it has become an ab-
solute necessity for industrial production itself. It has
also become a necessity for agricultural production, and
is, above all, essential to the maintenance of the public
health. Only through the amalgamation . of city and
country can the present poisoning of air, water, and
localities, be put at an end and the waste filth of the

244 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

cities be used for the cultivation of vegetation rather
than the spreading of disease.

The capitaHstic industry has made itself relatively
independent of local limitatiohs for its raw materials.
The textile industry works with imported raw materials
for the most part. Spanish iron ores are worked up in
England and Germany, and South American copper ores
in England. Every coal field supplies a yearly increas-
ing number of places beyond its own confines. The
whole coast of Europe has steam engines driven by
English and, occasionally German and Belgian, coal. A
society freed from the limits of capitalistic production
could make still further advances. While it makes a
sort of all round skilled producers, who are acquainted
with the scientific requirements of general industrial pro-
duction, and by whom every new succession of branches
of production is completely developed from beginning
to end, it creates a new productive force which under-
takes the transportation of a superabundance of raw
material or fuel.

The abolition of the separation between town and
country is no Utopia, it is an essential condition of the
proportionate distribution of the greater industry
throughout the country. Civilization has left us a num-
ber of large cities, as an inheritance, which it will take
much time and trouble to abolish. But they must and
will be done away with, however much time and trouble
it may take. ' \¥hatever fate may be in store for the
German nation, Bismarck may have the proud conscious-
ness that his dearest wish, the downfall of the great city,
will be fulfilled.

And now we can see the childishness of Herr Duehr-
ing's notion that society can obtain possession of the
rneans of production without revolutionizing the old

SOCIALISM 245

methods of production from the ground up and above all
doing away with the old form of the division of labor.

It is easy to see that the revolutionary elements which
will abolish the old division of labor together with the
separation of town and country and will revolutionize
production as a whole are already in embryo in the
methods of production of the modern great industry
and their unfolding is only hindered by the capitalistic
methods of production of to-day. But to see all this, it
is necessary to have a broader outlook than the mere lim-
itations of the Prussian Code, the country where
schnapps and beet sugar are the staple industries, and
you have to study industrial crises by way of the book-
trade. (This is a sneer at one of Duehring's illustra-
tions: Ed.) One has to understand the history and the
present manifestations of the greater industry particu-
larly in that land where it has its home and where it
has had its classic. development. It must not be imagined
that modern scientific socialism can be done away with
by the specific Prussian Socialism of Herr Duehring".

Distribution.

We have seen that Duehring's economics depend
upon the statement that the capitalistic method of pro-
duction is good enough and can be kept up, but that
the capitalistic method of distribution is bad and must
be done away with. We now discover that the " social-
ity " of Herr Duehring is merely the imaginary putting
' into force of this statement. In fact it appears that
Jierr Duehring has nothing to declare respecting the
method of production as such in a capitalistic society,
and that he will maintain the old division of labor in all

246 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

its essential features. So he has hardly a word to say
about production in his social state. Production is too
dangerous a ground for him to tread on. On the other
nand, in his estimation, distribution is not bound up
with production but can be settled by an act of the will.

Let us consider all the ideas of Herr Duehring as
realized. Let us then assume that the society pays each
of its members for his work a sum in gold in which are
incofporated six hours of labor, say twelve marks. Let
us now imagine that prices and values are in full accord,
so that under our hypothesis only the cost of raw ma-
terials, the wear and tear of machinery, the use of tools
and wages are comprehended. A society then of a hun-
dred working members produces daily goods of the
value of 1200 marks, and, in a year of three hundred
working days three hundred and sixty thousand marks
and expends the entire amount on its working members
and thus each member has his share of three thousand
six hundred marks a year. At the end of the year
and at the end of a hundred years the society is no bet-
ter off than it was at the beginning. Accumulation is
entirely overlooked. Worse than that, since accumula-
tion is a social necessity and the hoarding of gold is an
elementary form of accumulation, the organization of a
society on this basis will necessitate private accumula-
tion on .the part of its members and consequently the
destruction of the society.

How can this difficulty with respect to the economic
society be overcome ? Refuge might be taken in a forci-
ble raising of proceeds and the produce of the society
sold at four hundred and eighty thousand marks instead
of for three hundred and sixty thousand. But all other

SOCIALISM 247

economic societies would be in the same fix and each
would have to make it out of the other with the result
that they would only be extorting tribute from their
own members.

Or it might find an easy way out by paying for six
hours work less than the product of six hours work,
eight marks a day instead of twelve, prices remaining
the same. It accomplishes in this way plainly and openly
what formerly it did secretly, it adopts the Marx surplus
value notion to the amount of one hundred and twenty
thousand marks a year, since it pays the members
under the value of their work and reckons the goods
which they are only able to buy by its means at their
full value. His economic society therefore can only get
a reserve fund by adopting the truck system. There-
fore one of two things is certain, either the economic
society practices " equal work for equal work " and then
it can get no funds for the maintenance and develop-
ment of industry except through private sources, or it
does create such a fund and ceases to practice " equal
work for equal work."

This is the fact about the exchange in the economic
society, but what about the form of it? According to
Herr Duehring in his economic society money does not
function as money between the members of the society.
It serves merely as a labor certificate ; it corresponds with
the expression of Marx " only the share of the individ-
ual of the common labor, and his individual claim to the
consumption of a certain portion of the common pro-
duct " and in this function, say.s Herr Duehring, it is
just as little money as a theater ticket. In short it
functions in exchange like Owens " labor-time money."
As far as the mere calculating between amount due for
production and the amount to be expended in consump-

248 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

[

tion of the individual member of the society is con-
cerned, paper markers or gold would serve the purpose
equally well. But it would not do for other purposes
as will appear.

If the specie does not function as money among the
members of a given society, but as a mark of labor, it
functions still less as money in the exchange between
different economic societies. According to the theory of
Herr Duehring, therefore, specie as money is entirely
superfluous. In fact it would be mere bookkeeping to
set off the products of equal labor against the products
of equal labor, according to the natural measure,
of labor-time, taking the labor-hour as a unit — if the
labor hours are first translated into terms of money.
Exchange is in reality only simple exchange ; all sur-
pluses are easily and simply equalized by means of bills
of exchange on other societies. But when one com-
munity has a deficit in its dealings with another com-
munity it can only make it up by increasing its labor out-
put, if it is not to suffer disgrace in the eyes of other
communities. The reader will notice here that this is
no attempt at social reconstruction. We are simply tak-
ing the notions of Herr Duehring and showing their
unavoidable conclusions.

Therefore neither in exchange among the individual
members of a society nor in exchange between different
economic societies can gold realize itself as money. Yet
Herr Duehring says that the fupction of money is car-
ried oyt even in his " sociality." We must therefore
discover another field of activity for this money function.
HelT Duehring predicates a quantitatively equal con-
sumption. But he cannot compel that. On the other
hand, he prides himself that in his community one can
do with his money as he will. He cannot prevent one

SOCIALISM 249

man, therefore, from saving" money and another from
not making his wages sufficient. This is indisputable,
for he recognises the common property of the family in
inheritance and talks about the duty of parents to pro-
vide for their children. Thereby his quantitatively equal
consumption comes a cropper. The young unmarried
man can get along splendidly on twelve marks a day,
but the widower with eight young children has a hard
time ' of it. On the other hand the community, since
it takes money in payment without ceremony, lets money
be acquired otherwise than by individual labor when
the opportunity offers. Non olct. It does not know
whence it comes. But now arises the chance for money
which has up to now played the role of a standard of
work performed to operate as real money. The oppor-
tunities and the motives arise "for saving money on tlic
one hand and squandering it on the other. The need)-
borrows from the saver. The borrowed money taken
b\- the community in payment for means of living be-
comes again, what it is in present day society, the social
incarnation of human labor, the real measure of labor,
the universal means of circulation. All the laws in the
world are powerless against it, just as powerless as
they are against the multiplication table or the chemical
composition of water. And the saver of money is in
a position to demand interest so that specie functioning
as money again becomes a breeder of interest.

So far as we have only dealt with the operation of
specie inside of Herr Duehring's economic societ>.
But beyond the confines of that society the world goes
peacefully along its old way. Gold and silver remain
in the world-market, as world money, as the universal
means of purchase and payment, as the absolute social
incorporation of wealth. And in this ownership of the

250 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

precious metals the individual societies find a new motive
for saving, for getting rich, for increasing their supply, —
the motive of becoming free and independent of the
communities beyond their borders and of converting into
money their piled up wealth in the world market. The
profit hunters transform themselves into traders in the
means of circulation, into bankers, into controllers of the
means of production, though these may remain forever
as the property of the economic and trading communties
in name. Therewith the savers and profit mongers who
have been converted into bankers become the lords of
the economic and trading communes. The " sociality "
df Herr Duehring is very distinct from the " cloudy
ideas " of the earlier socialists. It- has no other end
than the resurrectioji of the high finance.

The only value with which political economy is ac-
quainted is the value of commodities. What are com-
modities? Products produce*! in a society composed of
more or less separated private producers and therefore
private products. But these private products first be-
come commodities when they are made not for private
use but for the use of someone else, that is for social
use. They are converted into objects of social use by
means of exchange. The private producers are there-
fore in a social relationship, they constitute a society.
Their private products, while the private products of
each individual, are at the same time, unconsciously and
indeed involuntarily, social products also. Wherein
does the social character of these private products con-
sist ? Plainly in two properties, in the first place because
they satisfy human needs but have no use-value for the
producers, and in the second place that, while they are
the products of individual private producers, they are
at the same time plainly the products of human labor,

SOCIALISM 251

of human labors in general. In so far as they have a
use value for other people they can be exchanged; in
so far as they all possess the common quality of human
labor in general, they can be ^mutually compared in ex-
change by means of this labor. In two similar products
under identical social conditions there may be unequal
amounts of private labor, but equal amounts of human
labor in general. An unskillful smith might take as
long to make five horeshoes as it would take a skillful
smith to make ten. But society does not fix the price
according to accidental lack of skill of the one, it recog-
nises only human labor in general, the human labor of
the ordinary norma! skilled smith. Each of the five
horseshoes then made by the first does not have any
more value than each of the other ten which were made
in the same time as the five. Only so far as is socially
necessary does private labor comprehend human labor
in general.

Therefore I maintain that a commodity has a certain
value, 1st. because it is a socially useful product, and.
because it is produced by a private individual for pri-
vate profit, 3d. because while it is a product of private
labor, it is, at the same time, unconsciously and involun-
tarily a social product and exchanges socially according
to a definite social standard. 4th. this standard is not
expressed in terms of labor, in so many hours, but in
another commodity. If, therefore, I say that this clock
is worth this piece of cloth and that they are both worth
fifty marks, I say that in the clock, the cloth and the
gold there is an equal amount of social labor. I also
affirm that the amounts of social labor time in them are
socially measured, and found to be equal, not directly and
absolutely however, as one measures labor time in hours
or days, but in a round about fashion, relatively, by

252 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

means of exchange. I cannot therefore express this
certain amo.unt of labor-time in labor hours, since their
number is not known to me, but I can express it rela-
tively in terms of another commodity, which has th^
same amount of labor time incorporated in it. The
clock is worth as much as the piece of cloth.

But while the production of commodities and the
exchange of commodities compel the society resting
upon them to take this roundabout course, they are im-
pelled to a shortening of the process. They separate
from the mass of commodities one sovereign commodity,
in which the value of all other commodities can be uni-
versally expressed, a commodity which is the complete
incarnation of social labor, and, against which, all other
commodities ftiay be set in direct comparison — gold.
Gold already germinates in the idea of value, it is only
developed value. But since the commodity value exists
in gold also, itself being a commodity, a new factor
arises in the society which produces and exchanges com-
modities, a factor with new social functions and opera-
tions. We can now examine this a little more closely.

The economy of the production of commodities is by
no means the only science which has to reckon with
relatively known factors. Even in physics, yve do not
know how many single gas molecules there are in a
given volume of gas, pressure and temperature being
given. But we know, as far as Boyle's law is correct,
that a given volume of that gas has as many molecules as
a similar volume of another selected gas at the same
pressure and the same temperature. We can therefore
compare the different volumes of different gases with
respect to their molecular content, and, if we take one
litre of gas at 0° Fahrenheit as the unit we can refer
the molecular content of each to this standard. In

\ I

SOCIALISM 253

chemistry the absolute atomic weights of separate ele-
ments is unknown to us. But we know them relatively
when we know their mutual conditions. And just as the
production of commodities and their economy has a rela-
tive expression for the unknown quantities of labor exist-
ing in commodities, since it compares these commodities
according to the relative amounts of labor which they
contain, so chemistry makes a relative expression for
the amounts of atomic weights unknown to it, since it
compares the separate elements according to their ato-
mic weights and expresses the weight of the one as
multiples or factors of the other. And just as the pro-
duction of commodities elevates gold to the position of
an absolute commodity, to the universal equivalent
for other commodities, the measure of values, so chem-
istry elevates hydrogen to the position of a chemical
gold-commodity, since it fixes the atomic weight of
hydrogen at i and reduces the atomic weights of all
the other elements in terms of hydrogen and expresses
them as multiples of its atomic weight.

The production of commodities is by no means the ex-
clusive form of social production. In the ancient
Indian communities and the family communities of the
Southern Slavs products were not transformed into
commodities. The members of the community were di-
rectly engaged in social production, the work was dis-
tributed as custom and circumstances required as were
the products as they came into the realm of consumption.
Direct social production and direct social consumption
exclude all exchange of commodities and hence the trans-
formation of products into commodities (at least within
the confines of th^ society) and therewith their transfor-
mation into value. /

As soon as society comes into direct possession of the

254 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

means of production and undertakes production as a
society, the labor of each, however distinctive its
special useful character may be, becomes direct social
labor. The amount of social labor existing in a product
does not then have to be established in a roundabout
way, daily experience shows the average amount of
human labor necessary. Society can easily determine
how many hours of labor there are in a steam engine,
how many in a hectolitre of wheat of last harvest, how
many in a hundred square yards of cloth of a given
quality. It cannot therefore happen that the quantities
of labor embodied in commodities, which will then be
absolutely and directly known, will be expressed in terms
of a measure which is only relative, fluctuating, inade-
quate and absolute, in a third product, and not in their
natural, adequate and absolute measure, time. This
would not happen any more than in chemistry. One
would express the atomic weights indirectly by means
of hydrogen if it were possible to express them ab-
solutely in their adequate measure, that is in real weight,
that is in billions or quadrillions of grammes. Under
the foregoing conditions, then, society ascribes no value
to products. The simple fact that a hundred yards of
cloth have taken a thousand hours in their production
need not be expressed in any distorted or foolish fash-
ion, they would be worth a thousand labor hours. So-
ciety would then know how much labor each object of
use required for its creation. It would have to direct
the plan of production in accordance with the means
of production to which labor-force also belongs. The
advantageous eflfects of the different objects of use and
their relations to each other and the creation of the
necessary means of labor would be the sole deter-
minants of the plan of production. People make thinp-s

SOCIALISM 255

very easily without any interference on tlie part of the
much discussed " value."

The value idea is the most universal and the most
comprehensive expression of the economic conditions
of the production of commodities. In the idea of value
there is not only the germ of gold but also of those
more highly developed forms of commodity production
and exchange. Since value is the expression of the
social labor incorporated in individual products, there lies
the possibility of a difference between this and the in-
dividual labor embodied in the same product. This dif-
ference becomes very apparent to a private producer who
abides by an old fashioned method of production while
the social method of production has taken a step for-
ward. It then appears that the sum of all the private
manufacturers of a given commodity produce an amount
in excess of the social needs. Then, since the value of
a commodity is expressed only in terms of other com-
modities and can only be realised in exchange with
them, the possibility arises that either exchange will
cease or that the commodity will not realise its full
value. Finally, the specific commodity labor-force finds
its value like that of other wares in the social labor
time necessary for its production. In the value form
of the product there is already in embryo the entire
capitalistic form of production, the antagonism between
the capitalists and the wage-workers, the industrial re-
serve army, the crisis. The capitalistic system will be
abolished by the restoration of true value (just as
Catholicism will be abolished by the restoration of the
true Pope), or by the restoration of a society in which
the producer finally dominates his product, by the doing
away of an economic category which is the most com-

256 LANDMARKS Of' SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

prehensive expression of the slavery of the producer to
his own product.

When the society producing commodities has devel-
oped the inherent value form of the commodities, as
such, to the gold-form, various germs of value hitherto
hidden thereupon begin to sprout. The next substan-
tial step is the generalising of commodity forms. Gold
makes objects directly produced for use into commod-
ities by driving them into exchange. Thereupon the
commodity and the gold smite the community which is
engaged in social production, break one social tie after
another and finally dissolve the society into a mass of
private producers. Gold establishes, as in India, indi-
vidual cultivation of the land in the place of communal
cultivation, then it destroys the system of regular dis-
tribution of communal lands among individuals and
makes ownership final, and lastly it leads to the division
of the communal wood land. Whatever other causes
arising from the industrial development may work along
with it, gold is always the most ppwerful instrument for
the destruction of the communal society.

The State, the Fqmily, and Education

(Herr Duehring says " In the free society there will be
no religion, since, in all its degrees, it tends to destroy
the originality of the child, in that it places something
above nature or behind it, which may be affected by
means of works or prayers " also " a properly constituted
socialist state will do away with all the paraphernalia of
spiritualistic magic, and all the actual forms of reli-
gion." Engels proceeds — )

Religion will be forbidden. Now, religion is nothins;
but the fantastic reflection in men's minds of the externat
forces which dominate their every day existence, a rellcc-

SOCIALISM ' 257

tion in which earthly forces take the form of the super-
natural. In the beginning of history it is the forces
of nature which first produce this Reflection and in the
course of development of dififerent peoples give rise to
manifold and various personification. This first process
is capable of being traced, at least as far as the Indo-
European peoples are concerned, by comparative
mythology, to its source in the Indian Vedas and its
advance can be shown among the Indians, Greeks, Per-
sian, Romans, and Germans, and, as far as the material
is available, also among the Celts, Lithuanians, and
Slavs. But, besides the forces of nature, the social
forces dominated men by their apparent necessity, for
these forces were, in reality, just as strange and unac-
countable to men as were the forces of nature. The
imaginary forms in which, at first, only the secret forces
of nature were reflected, became possessed of social at-
tributes, became the representatives of historical forces.
By a still further development the natural and social
attributes of a number of gods were transformed to one
all-powerful god, who is, on his- part, only the reflection
of man in the abstract. So arose monotheism,, which
was historically the latest product of the Greek vulgar
philosophy, and found its impersonation in the Hebrew
exclusively national god, Jahve. In this convenient,
handy and adaptible form religion can continue to
exist as the direct, that is, the emotional form of the
relations of man to the dominating outside, natural, and
social forces, as long as man is under the power of these
forces. But we have seen over and over again in modern
bourgeois society that man is dominated by the condi-
tions which he has himself created and that he is con-
trolled by the same means of production which he him-
-sel has made. The fundamental facts which give rise

258 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

to~ the reflection by religion therefore still persist and
with them the reflection persists also. And just because
bourgeois economy has a certain insight into the relations
of the original causes of this phenomenon, it does not
alter it a particle. Bourgeois economy can neither pre-
vent crises, on the whole, nor' can it stop the greed of the
individual capitalists, their disgrace and bankruptcy, nor
can it prevent the individual laborers from suffering
deprivation of employment and poverty. Man proposes
and God (to wit, the outside force of the capitalistic
method of production) disposes. Mere knowledge even
though it be broader and deeper than bourgeois econom-
ics is of no avail to upset the social forces of the master
of society. That is fundamentally a social act. Let us
suppose that this act is accomplished and society in all
its grades freed from the slavery to the means of pro-
duction which it has made but which now dominate it as
an outside force. Let us suppose that man no longer
merely proposes but that he also disposes. Under such
conditions the last vestiges of the external force which
now dominates man are destroyed, that force which is
now reflected in religion. Therewith, the religious re-
flection itself is destroyed»owing to the simple fact that
there is nothing more to reflect.

But Herr Duehring cannot wait until religion dies
a natural death. He treats it after a radical fashion.
He out Bismarcks Bismarck, he makes severe " May
laws " not only against Catholicism but against all re-
ligion. He sets his gendarmes of the future on religion
and thereby gives it a longer lease of life by martyr-
dom. Wherever we look we find that Duehring's social-
ism has the Prussian brand.

After Herr Duehring has blithely got rid of religion
he says "Man can now, since he is dependent upon him-

SOCIALISM ) 259

self, and nature alone, intelligently direct the social forces
in tvery way which open to him the course of things
and his own existence." Let us look for a little while
at -that course of things to which the self-reliant human
can give direction.

The first in the course of things by which man^ be-
comes self-reliant is being born. Then during the time
of his immaturity his education is in the hands of his
mother. " This period may, as in the old Roman law,
reach to the age of puberty, that is to about fourteen
years of age." Only where the older boys do not respect
the authority of the mother does the father's assistance
play a part and the public method of education robs
this of all harm. With puberty the boy comes under the
natural care of his father, where this is exercised in
a truly fatherly manner, in other cases society takes
charge of his education.

As Herr Duehring has already maintained the posi-
tion that it is possible to. convert the capitalistic methpds
of production into social methods without disturbing
the mode of production itself, so he here seems to think
that one can separate the modern bourgeois family from
its entire economic foundations without any change in
the whole form of the family. This form is so perma-
nent in his estimation that he thinks of the old Roman
jurisprudence, in an " improved " form, as the model
of the family for ever, and he does not conceive of the
family otherwise than as a permanent unit. The
Utopists have the superiority over Herr Duehring here.
In their estimation a really free mutual condition would
arise in all the family relations as a result of the free
association and the public ownership of the instruments
of production together with the institution of a system
of public education. And Marx has shown furthermore

26o LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

in his " Capital " how " the greater industry, which takes
widows, young persons and children of both sexes from
the home, and employs them in organized social produc-
tive processes, lays the foundation for a higher form of
the family and better conditions for people of both
sexes."

LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

APPENDIX

The foregoing pages will have given the reader some.
idea of the infinite care which Engels expended in order
to keep abreast of the chief scientific discoveries of his
times. He was as painstaking as a genius. On the
other h^nd, his modesty Was almost absurd, for he never
ventured to claim anything for himself, and such ability
as was displayed in the laying of the economic political
foundations of the socialist movement was invariably
credited by him to the -superior talent and comprehension
of Marx.

There is no question that the work constitutes a most
effective reply to the (arguments of Duehring, with
whom, poor fellow, we need no longer trouble our-
selves. It constitutes, moreover, a very formidable an-
swer to all those who seek for a justification of the so-
cialist movement in those abstract conceptions which
the average man finds it so hard to escape. In fact,
so removed is the point of view of the writer of the
foregoing pages from that of the man in the street that
it is doubtful whether it is possible for more thin a
comparatively few students thoroughly to grasp the
significance of the dialectic and to apply it in a satis-
factory and effective fashion. Still, there is no question
that this understanding of the socialist movement, as
« movement, is absolutely required of all who can be

961

262 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

considered as taking an intelligent and useful attitude
with regard to social and political questions.

The possession of this key gave the two founders of
the modern socialist movement such a comprehension
of the tendencies of modern civilization as enabled them
to make those economic and political predictions which
have been so completely fulfilled.

There is little need to call attention to the fact that
much of Engels' argument is now antiquated in face
of the growth of science and the almost incredible de-
velopment of mechanical invention and the material
progress consequent upon if. It could not have been
otherwise. The wonders of Engels' day are the com-
monplaces of our existence. The machines, which he
considered so wonderful and so change-compelling have
already been "scrapped" for new machines of greater
power and capacity for production. The remark that
the battleship had in his time arrived at a point where
it was as expensive as it was unfit for fighting ■ sounds
almost ridiculous in face of the. tremendous development
of theengines of naval warfare- since he>wrote, and the
invention and use of the submarine. Still it must be
remembered that there has been no really great test of
ships of war since Engels' day and that the expense
of modern navies is worrying the governments to dis-
traction. Only a few weeks ago Lord Charles Beres-
ford refused to accept the command of the Channel
Squadron unless provided with an equipment the ex-
pense of which ' seemed almost intolerable to Great
Britain, wealthy as that country is and dependent as
she is on the maintenance oi the sea power. Great
armies are still on th^ increase and the expense of their
support ..combined with the unsatisfactorine^s -.of 'theic
performances is by no means reassuring to those who

APPENDIX 263

have the responsibility for national military orgainiza-
tion. The Boer War proved the unreliability of the
armed forces of one power, at all events, and the per-
formances of gfeat masses of trained men in the Russo-
Japanese conflict have not inspired any very great re-
spect for the effectiveness of these colossal and exr
pensive fighting machines. Together with the break-
down of armies and navies, as a material fact, there has
grown up a strong prejudice against their employment,
and the anti-war attitude of the international proletariat
has been supplemented and strengthened by the distinct
growth of an international peace spirit in certain sec-
tions of the middle class. So that in spite of superficial
appearances it -does not seem to be so very unlikely that
the action of the dialectic will be manifest in the de-
struction of modern armaments, at least as far as the
greater nations are concerned, though there is little
dpubt that military forces will still be maintained for
the purpose of bullying and overawing the smaller and
weaker peoples.

Mention has already- been made of the fact that Engels
never really divested himself of the old " forty-eight "
spirit. The notion that a revolution would break out
somewhere in the near future finds ia curiously fixed, if
unexpressed, lodgmerit in his mind. One cannot help
feeling that he expected things to mature °arlier than
they have done and that he anticipated that changes
in the mode of production and the development of in-
dustry would have made a stronger impression upon
the mind of the proletarian than history shows to have
been the case. This latent, but still persistent, notion
is in curious contrast to the almost detached way in
which, particularly in his later years, he views the
course of economic and political events. He never

264 LANDMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

really in fact divested his jjiind of the notion of the
imminence of social revolution, for in his 1892 preface
to " The Condition of the Working Class in England in
1844 " he says, " I have taken care not to strike out of
the text the many prophecies, amongst Others that of
an imminent social revolution in England, which my
youthful ardor induced me to venture upon." His
youthful ardor seems never to have really abated in that
respect. The dreams of boyhood seem to have haunted
him and the old fighter stirred uneasily in his- study chair
at the echoes of past conflicts in which he also heard
the bugles of the coming fight. To those who have
watched the development of Engels' thought, as showri in
his works, this philosophic, unemotional way of looking
at tilings proves the effect of experience and age upon
the fighter. He started with a heart inflamed with the
wrongs of the suffering, as the damning pages of the
work above cited show ; he ends with a calm and dis-
passionate enquiry (apart from what he considered to
be the exigencies of controversy) into the fundamental
causes of economic and social progress. The burning
enthusiasm and white-hot indignation had died down in
him ere he reached the stage of the Duehring contro-
versy. He finds that although not everything that is
real is reasonable, to use the phrase against which he
has fulminated in " Feuerbach," nevertheless every step
in human progress has been an essential step and it is
impossible to hurry things. To the proletarian he looks
of course as the next great actor in the drama of so-
cial development. But the proletarian, while his destiny
is indubitable, is still not a being apart from existing
conditions. He exists in the conditions, is in fact part
of the conditions, and, while at war with them, takes
on the color of his surroundings. The facts of life

APPENDIX 265

have driven him to an unconscious rejection of old
faiths and old ^philosophies but they have not forced hitti
to take up the sword against the actual realities of mod-
ern life, to which he appears, in fact, to submit himself
with a humility which is at least provoking to the eager
and enthusiastic revolutionist.

AVhat wonders of economic organization, what tri-
umphs in mechanical production have been achieved
since Engels gave the last revision to this book in 1894
we. in the United States at least, have cause to know.
The entire structure of production has been modified
from top to bottom, the old individual doctrine has
fallen victim to its dialectic, and concentrated industry
and collective capital now rise supreme over the ruins
of that individualism which gave them birth and to
which they owe their existence. In the name of the
individual the individual is denied. The courts hand
down decisions in the name of individual liberty which
have for their result the d€thfoning and extermination
of the individual. The conglomeration of individual
states which was considered the very foundation of the
American government, and the outward and visible sign
of cojltctive sovereignty is already in its death throes.
The dialectic of the United States is in course of devel-
ment and there comes about in consequence the birth
of the United Imperial Republic, a republic which is so
only in name, which is, in fact, as little of a republic
as were those oligarchies of the Middle Ages whose
very existence defamed the name of republic. The old
things have passed away, all things have become new.

Still there is one factor which has not really ap-
preciably changed, one factor which is always con-
fronted by the same necessity, the necessity of main-
taining its existence. This factor is the working class.

266 LANDMARKS OF. SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

The dialectic is at work with the working class also,
and that which according to the individualistic notion
consisted of isolated units seeking their daily bread in
meek conformity with the laws of contract and property
will disappear into that great collective organized body
of labor which spurns the theories of contract and
thereby makes itself no Iwiger subject but master.

Austin Lewis.

/^^

Uaa